She invited me to join her on a walk each morning, timed precisely so we’d cross over the field when the sun came up. She arrived at my cabin porch with a zircon crystal in her hand that she insisted she couldn’t start her day without. We walked across the meadow that separated the guest cottages from the main building, and then down to a creek that lined the north of the property, and then up around the lavender fields through a marked trail. We’d go for an hour and a half each time and I was always a step behind her. Iris spoke over her shoulder in a constant stream of consciousness, with such particular emphasis on her words that it almost sounded as though she had rehearsed every sentence. She had a long, sharp nose. Her even sharper black bob barely moved while she walked briskly, and her hair never curled in the damp air like mine.

She mostly talked about her own life, her cancer, the miracles she’d witnessed as a doctor, and the losses she’d suffered. Iris had been married to another surgeon, who had a fatal heart attack while he was operating. She spoke about the incident as though the worst part of the whole thing was that he couldn’t finish the procedure. When she was done telling me about whatever it was she intended to share that day—there always seemed to be an intention, like she was logging a lesson book—she would stop and stretch her calves and tell me to walk ahead of her for the rest of the way.

This is when her questions about Sam would begin. Questions that made me feel like I was under a lamp on her operating table, being ripped open at my rib cage. Crack by crack.

I had told her about Sam when we first met at dinner because she’d so pointedly asked me: “How many children do you have, and are they all still living?”

I had answered her calmly. I had one child. And he was dead. Iris offered little sympathy. She spoke flatly. She told me I needed to find a new way of living in the world now. I hated her and I loved her.

I got out of bed at five o’clock every morning. I brushed my teeth and stepped out into the fresh, dewy grass to talk with this woman I did not know. When I spoke to Iris about Sam, my legs ached and my chest felt heavy enough to pull me to the ground. I’d arrive back at my cabin at the end of the walk, feet wet and leggings damp, and I’d step under the steaming-hot outdoor shower and forget every last thing I had said that morning, every last question Iris had asked me. What do you think he’d be like now if he’d lived? What was your favorite thing about him? What did he feel like to hold? How was he born into the world? What was the weather like on the day he died? I scrubbed it all away, like an affair with another man, like illicit sex that nobody could ever know about.

The day before I was to leave, two weeks after you dropped me off, the groundskeepers found me in the ice-cold stream on the property. I was naked and frantic, flailing like an animal being eaten alive.

Let me touch him. I’m his mother. I need him. I need to take him home.

My voice was gone for hours.

I couldn’t stand up when they pulled me out. The resident medic came and went. People whispered and held their hands gently to their clavicles as they watched me gain my footing and pull on a pair of sweatpants from the gift shop with the logo of the center embroidered on the hip. I dropped the blanket from my shoulders and let my shriveled breasts stare back at the small crowd around me. I was far beyond the place where shame could exist.

Iris brought tea to my cabin, but I didn’t open the door when she knocked or when she apologized loudly through the cedar planks to say she had misjudged how fragile I was. Fragile. I wrote the word with my fingertip on the other side of the door.

A therapist who specialized in grief, the one I so mindfully declined, requested to do a formal assessment with me, and said that I should think about staying longer. She suggested I might not be safe on my own. She suggested she call you.

“No, thank you,” I said and that was all. There wasn’t much more to say.

The next morning, I sat on the porch of my cabin with my suitcase and waited for you. I stared at the trees across the lot, each swept orderly to the west.

“So?” You kept your eyes on the highway. I put my hand on top of yours, on top of the gear shift. You moved from fifth gear to sixth. I knew what I had to say next.

“How is she? How’s Violet?”

49

We’ll be fine. Go. Have fun.” I flipped the puzzle pieces right side up on the floor and forced myself to look at Violet. She didn’t lift her eyes. You had a work thing. They were more frequent than they used to be, it seemed, and you looked different when you left the house now. Layered your clothing, belted your jeans. You looked handsome and I told you so earlier, in our bedroom.

“Same old guy you married,” you’d said.

I couldn’t have said the same of myself, and we both knew this, our eyes meeting in the full-length mirror behind the door.

The solar system puzzle had one thousand pieces and hadn’t been in our house before I left. Your parents had stayed with you and Violet while I was gone. Your mother and I hadn’t spoken about much since Sam died, although she had called every two days for months to say a quick hello, to offer to come stay, to say she was thinking of me. She was trying, but she didn’t know how to be around me, and I didn’t know how to be around anyone. They’d been gone before I arrived home from the retreat, although the cookies she made were still warm on the counter. The babysitter was there when I came through the door—I hadn’t seen her since Sam died. Her eyes were swollen and red. We hugged and I thought of the sugary smell she had left on him whenever I took him from her arms.