allowed herself to get far enough away to be homesick?
“I think it’s wonderful what you’re doing, Knox,” Mina said. “We all do.”
They hung up. Knox looked around, rolled up the sleeves of Ned’s shirt, and started in on the mess.
SHE FOUND BRUCE stretched out beside Ben, on a blanket that had been laid on the living room floor. Bruce’s feet were bare, his long body arranged in a straight line. He held a gaudy, rhinestoned compact open in front of Ben’s face, and passed the mirror back and forth in front of his eyes.
“This was in the bathroom cabinet,” Bruce said, looking up. “Don’t worry, I’m not putting makeup on him.”
“I didn’t think so,” Knox said, wiping her hands, still damp from cleaning, against the front of her jeans. She smiled.
“I thought it would be interesting for him to see himself,” Bruce said. “He seems to like it.”
Knox watched Ben’s face. His mouth hung open in what looked like astonishment. His tongue worked against his bottom lip, and he didn’t look away from the mirror once. Who did he think that was? In the world he existed in, did he think his reflection was just another baby, hovering and staring?
“Is Ethan still napping?”
“Yep. The phone didn’t seem to wake him up.”
Knox sat in the chair opposite Bruce and Ben and closed her eyes. Even as she did so, she told herself not to get too comfortable inside this reprieve; Ethan would be up soon enough.
“So, your mother.”
Knox opened her eyes. Bruce wasn’t looking at her.
“She seems to have a lot of plans,” Bruce said, his voice even.
“She’s worked up a head of steam, that’s for sure,” Knox said. “She wasn’t like this when I left.”
“The service. Where I’m going to stay. How long. She mentioned some place across the road where we could have our own space. A guesthouse or something.”
Her parents had recently acquired a pocket of land that lay catty-corner to the yearling division. There was a house on it that her mother had yet to redo, a hollow relic from the thirties; the architect had referenced a much older Georgian style with some skill, but neglect had left it a mess; the last time Knox had walked through its rooms, she’d wondered how they could ever recover.
“She didn’t mention that.”
Bruce smiled at her from the floor, but there was something hard in his features, too. “She’s been working to get it ready for me. She wanted a list of everything I thought the boys would need for the ‘nursery.’”
“She must think it’s important not to have us in your hair while you’re down there.”
“That’s the thing. I have this weird feeling that she plans to keep me there. It’s a lot of trouble to go to for a few days.”
“No. I’m sure it’s just something for her to put her energy into right now,” Knox said.
“I just wish—”
Knox waited.
“I wish we didn’t have to put the boys through this, so early. Make them travel. Everything feels like it’s happening too soon.”
“Yeah.”
“I wonder why we all have to go through it. Wouldn’t it be easier not to put ourselves through it? All those people.”
We, he’d said. Knox’s mind caught. Of course, she wasn’t necessarily included in the we.
“I think the boys will be okay,” Knox said, not wanting to think, right now, of Lindsay Acheson’s plump, smiling face, of Beth Foreman—who’d called Knox “stork” in school—attempting to wrap any of them up in her arms, of Mrs. Howard’s lisped condolences.
“They’re portable,” she continued. “They’ll roll with things.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know.” Knox sighed. “But my family needs this. My mother needs this, it seems.” Knox felt herself returning to her usual role of loyalist, of translator. She felt like contradicting herself and her automatic explanations.
“Part of me is afraid that I don’t. That gathering a million rubberneckers together won’t make me feel better. It’s supposed to, right? I’ll do it, but I’m not going to say anything. There’s nothing I feel ready to say. Jesus.”
“It’s what has to happen next, Bruce. It might as well be now, as opposed to a year from now.” A year from now, where would they be? The boys walking, or trying to. Laughing, speaking. Would they have lost the grave suggestions of understanding that Knox felt she recognized in their faces now—especially Ethan’s? Would they move further away from the knowledge of how they’d come to be here, instead of closer to it, as they grew? Knox couldn’t picture herself a