—
Exhausted yet wired, Gretchen sinks onto a hay bale on the floor of the little stone outbuilding where Charlie brought the newborns to sleep for the night with the four other kids born last week. She watches the tiny new goats wiggle around and get comfortable in a big pile in the corner, never taking her eye off Sleepy Jean for more than a second. But soon the adrenaline of sticking her hand inside of a goat and maneuvering its offspring wears off, and she’s left wrung out. Her eyes flutter closed and she’s about to fall asleep when the goose bumps on her left arm alert her to Everett’s presence.
“Hi,” he says, staring at the toes of his boots.
“Hi,” she says.
“I saw you helping with Beulah. You did great.”
“Thanks. It was super gross.” Her eyes search for Sleepy Jean among the other goats. Strange how her heart soars as soon as she spots the tiny black-and-white kid half-buried under a slightly larger, two-day-older tan one.
Everett fiddles with his cap. “Gretch. I’m sorry about earlier. With the, you know, attempted murder.” She swings her head to aim her stare at him, causing him to promptly add, “Not that I was actuallyattemptingto murder anyone! Anyway. It was... it was an error in judgment. And I understand why you’re mad at me.”
Gretchen sighs.
“And it was wrong of me to accuse you of not trying with Charlie,” he continues. “It’s just that it seems pretty easy to me. Let him in enough to get him to care about you. Make him fall in love. Then he’ll have to believe you.”
“I can’t do that, Ev. I can’t. My Rule.”
Everett reaches for her as if about to drape his arm over her shoulders, then remembers he can’t without turning her into a popsicle. Instead there’s silence, broken finally when one of the goats lets out an annoyed bleat as another accidentally steps on its face.
“I would argue,” Everett says, “that Charlie will definitely not be better off if you allow him to leave the farm and hedies tragically.”
Gretchen ignores this and continues, “It’s... important to me. Not to hurt him. Not to make him think I’m... I’m...”The bad person he already thinks I am. That I could so, so easily be if I stop being careful.
Everett shakes his head. “Look. Charlie is going to be cursed regardless of what happens. Right now, he’s likely to be dead and haunting this place within a few months instead of working the farm and annoyed about it butalive. You don’t want to leave him worse off? Well, I don’t see how you could possibly leave him worse off than he is right now, unless you do nothing at all and let this play out how it would have had you never shown up.”
“That’s unusually articulate of you,” Gretchen says.
Everett grins. “I don’t really know what that means, but thanks, I think?”
What if I’m the one who gets hurt? What if I’m the one who winds up worse off? What if I can’t make him love me at all?But she doesn’t voice these thoughts, because ultimately the goal of the Rule is to keep the selfishness her father taught her was one of her best assets from dictating her actions, and aren’t these fears about what happens if she makes Charlie care about her just another form of being selfish when it comes down to it?
“I promise I’ll try to behave myself going forward,” Everett says. “But the rest of the month is going to fly by. We’re already—what, three weeks in?”
“Less than one week.”
“Okay, but still. No more waiting around for inspiration to strike. Find a way. Let’s get this done. We need to keep him here.Safe.”
As much as she agrees her current strategy (which isn’t even a strategy so much as a hope that something will magically change) isn’t likely to pay off within the allotted time, Gretchen also isn’t ready to accept that the only way forward is the one most likely to leave at least one of them brokenhearted. “Yeah. I’ll... keep thinking.”
“Why don’t you go get some sleep?” Everett suggests. “You look tired.”
“Gee, thanks.” She watches as Sleepy Jean wiggles deeper into the cuddle puddle. “I think I’ll stay out here a little while longer.”
“Want some company?”
Gretchen is surprised to find that yes, actually, she does. And specifically Everett’s. Because he’s kind of a nightmare, but he’s also someone she can count on being there. He also knows that she’s a bullshit artist, and considers it a feature instead of a bug. She’s willing to admit that it’s... sort of nice to have him around.
She settles in, letting the goats nibble at her clothes and fingers like little weirdos, and Everett tells her about how Ellen and Charles used to call Charlie “Chick” when he was a boy because of how his baby hiccups sounded like a just-hatched bird cheeping. That somehow leads to when Ellen accidentally used salt instead of sugar in a batch of Christmas cookies. The time a goatgot into the house when no one was home and ate all of the labels off the cans in the pantry (“Preparing dinner became quite the adventure for the next six months or so!”). And other Waybill family stories that Gretchen decides to pretend half belong to her too, if only for tonight.
17
Gretchen awakens with a sore neck and two baby goats chewing on her ponytail. Despite her intention to go back to the house to shower and sleep, she must have drifted off on the hay bale in the little outbuilding. She lets out a quiet groan as she straightens and moves to shoo the kids away. There’s someone still sitting to her left—Everett, she assumes. Except in the process of shifting her body, her arm brushes against heat instead of cold.
Charlie.
Once her eyes are completely open and her neck is willing to participate, she turns her head slightly to confirm. Everett is absent, but Charlie is indeed seated beside her on the hay bale, scratching Clyde’s (or is it Bonnie’s? Gretchen struggles to tell the two dogs apart without Everett’s help) head and watching two babies attempting to simultaneously climb atop each other.
