Chapter 2

Dione made the smoothie every morning at seven. I praised the color, carried it through my study, and poured it into Nugget's bowl. Then I sat at my desk with my journal, because a ritual only works if you keep all of it.

By the second week, Nugget had filled out so much that the other hens stopped chasing her off the feeder. She waited for me at the fence every morning, pacing, and complained out loud when I was late.

"Look at you," Dione said on the tenth day, taking my empty glass. She touched my cheek with the back of her hand. "Glowing. Didn't I tell you?"

"You told me," I said.

Julian noticed too. He came home early that Thursday, and while I was rinsing dishes he wrapped his arms around me from behind and put his chin on my shoulder.

"You seem different lately," he said. "Lighter."

In the dark window over the sink I could see the two of us, his head against mine. He was smiling.

"I feel good," I said.

He kissed my hair and kept holding on, and I stood there and let him. He hadn't held me that long in months.

Around then, Dione's questions changed. How I'd slept stopped being enough. Was I sleeping too deeply? Did I ever lose track of an afternoon? Did I dream?

In my last life, the dreams started in the second week. A white house at the end of a gravel road, and a woman on the porch with her back to me. Every night the house was a little closer.

So when she asked again at lunch, I let my spoon rest in the soup and frowned, like I was reaching for something.

"It's funny you ask. I keep dreaming about a house. A white one, out on a gravel road. There's somebody on the porch, but I can never see her face."

The ladle in Dione's hand knocked against the pot before she set it down.

"That sounds peaceful," she said.

"It is, kind of." I went back to my soup. "I never used to remember my dreams."

That night I woke up thirsty around one and went down for water. I was near the bottom when I heard them in the living room, talking low, and I stopped with my hand on the rail.

"Mom, you have to be patient."

It was Julian. He said the word easily, like he'd been saying it his whole life.

"The locket is still cold." Dione's voice. "Ten days. It should be warm by now."

"She's dreaming about the white house. It's working. The dreams come first, then the warmth — you know that."

"And when my Celeste wakes up." Dione went quieter. "What happens to the girl?"

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

"There is no girl," Julian said. "There's a body. And in three weeks it belongs to the woman I should have married."

I stood on the stairs until they said good night. Then I went back up the way I'd come, skipping the step that creaks, and got into bed, and lay still.

Three weeks. He'd given her a delivery date. It was good to know the schedule.

I didn't sleep. Around two I worked my wedding ring off my finger and held it under the light of my phone. Julian had it engraved before the wedding, and I'd never looked closely. I'd always assumed it was our date.

The engraving read June 14. We were married in October. He proposed in March.

In the morning I told Dione I was going to the farmers market and drove to the library instead. The library keeps all the old papers on file. Celeste's obituary ran five years ago this spring — half a page, with a photograph, and three paragraphs about everyone who loved her.

She was born on June fourteenth.