The Probable Future

“It’s creamy,” Jenny said. “You made this?”

Love was never a mistake, even when it wasn’t returned. It was not unlike the phlox in Catherine Avery’s garden, untended, ignored, but there all the same.

“I’m sure it’s terrible,” Elinor said. “You don’t have to humor me.”

“I thought you could always tell when someone was telling the truth. Or at least it always seemed that way.”

“I knew a lie. That’s different from knowing the truth. Isn’t it funny; as far as I can tell, Will’s stopped lying.”

“He’s in love with Liza Hull.”

“Should we be happy for Liza or send her our sympathies?”

“Happy.” Jenny nodded. “Definitely.”

Elinor reached for the little watercolor of the tiger on the hillside. “How lovely. I dreamed that same image last night. That’s the hill behind the lake.”

“But there aren’t any tigers in Unity.”

“I know. I was dreaming of tiger lilies.”

They both laughed at Jenny’s error; she had seen a cat instead of a flower, a liar instead of a man who’d be true.

“I got it wrong yet again,” Jenny said.

Elinor took Rebecca’s compass from her pocket. “Maybe you need this.”

“Isn’t this from the case in the parlor?”

“What good does a compass do under glass? I thought you might put it to some use.”

Jenny thought about what her mother said all that day as her fever raged. She thought about tiger lilies and cups of tea and the strange turns love took. In the evening, Elinor came back with some vegetable broth and a cold compress for Jenny’s forehead, and not long after, Jenny’s fever broke. One minute she was burning up and the next she was cool and refreshed, probably the result of Elisabeth’s tea. Break-a-fever, break a heart, break every rule if you must.

Jenny took off her flannel pajamas and quickly dressed; she had a frantic desire for fresh air and for something more. When she stepped outside, there was the Archer, on the western horizon. There was Pegasus, high in the east. In the dark, the house really did look like a wedding cake, layer upon layer of white paint. She walked past the laurel, past the lilacs; she kept on until she had turned the corner by the old oak, half of which had leafed out and half of which was dry as kindling. She didn’t quite know where she was going until she was almost there. She could feel the weight of the compass in her pocket, and before long, she saw the phlox, blooming like little stars in a row.

Jenny knocked on the Averys’ back door, and when no one answered, she found the key under the mat, where it had always been stowed. The kitchen was dark—Will must be at Liza’s—but someone was home, that much was certain. Jenny could feel a person dreaming. In the dream a man was lost on a long road. It was a lane that never ended, which repeated itself just when the dreamer thought he’d reached the end. Night had begun to fall for the dreamer, but the time frame was unnaturally fast, with so many stars racing through the sky it was impossible to recognize the constellations. Even Polaris, the most constant point of all, had changed its position.

He was lost, Jenny could feel that. She had reached the door to his bedroom, where he slept with all the curtains drawn. He was so deeply asleep he didn’t open his eyes until she lay down beside him. Jenny thought about the first moment when she’d seen him following along as if he didn’t matter, always in the background, two steps behind, but staring at her across the lawn on the morning of her thirteenth birthday, when she was too young to know any better.

After he’d woken, she put the compass in his hand. She could feel the heat of his body, the fever he’d had for thirty years. Jenny Sparrow took off her clothes; she didn’t want anything between them. She felt cool, like a stone fished from the lake. She was so close, it was like a wave had come over him. He had convinced himself he was satisfied with his life; he’d stopped thinking about what he might have had or could have been. All the same, with Jenny in bed next to him, he was already drowning. That was what desire could do to a person. That’s what it did to him.

“Am I dreaming?” Matt Avery said. “Did I lose my thesis? Are you really here?”

Long ago, there were women in Unity who wore summer’s peach stones around their necks all year round, hoping for love. There were still people in town who believed it was this custom, rather than the shipwrecked saplings bound for Boston, which had caused so many peach trees to grow wild in backyards and all through the woods. Every time a new house was built, a bucket of peach stones would be found, and even children on their way to school knew that finding one meant luck, no matter the outcome: love forgotten, love gone wrong, love despite all odds, love ever after, love after all this time.