“Heather doesn’t even look at you. She doesn’t care!”
“I just want her to survive,” Tasha says, backing away from Elyse’s anger. “I want everyone to survive.”
“So does Annie,” Elyse says. “But she wants you—the both of you—to survive most of all.”
Tasha turns from her and goes back to draw with the children.
Improbably, the old greenhouse thrives in the winter. As the snows blow, the amaryllis flush a deeper red. One day in early January, Tasha snowshoes to the greenhouse and discovers that the vines have made their way out the door and are reaching to the dusty clouded sun.
She wrenches the door open and goes inside, and it is like stepping through a portal into the tropics. She has to peel off all her layers, sliding out of her coat and boots and shirt and pants until she’s standing in her underwear, so awash in scents and vivid greenery, she’s overcome.
It shouldn’t be hot in here, but it is.
The greenhouse shouldn’t be here at all, but it is.
Each time she stands in front of the flowers, her vision blurs and her mind is overwhelmed with despair—her mother in the fire, her father trying so hard to get her out, her father in the fire too. The people they left behind by the sea. Climbing the mountain that rises above them even though she’s never climbed a mountain before. Climbing the mountain in the midst of a fire that burns down all the trees, the ambulance rumbling hard behind her. Water rushing over them, swallowing her air. Children that she’s helped to birth and then, inadvertently, to kill. The people in the city who continue to starve. Poison plants that grow thick by the side of the road. She was not enough to stand between her parents and the fire. Her parents saved her, again and again, when she was a child, and in return she let them burn, she let them explode into nothing.
Her screams go on forever.
When she comes back to herself, she’s curled on the ground, her forehead pressed to the dirt. There’s a draft of cold air behind her—she turns, blinking slowly, and sees Heather outlined in the doorway. The twins watch Tasha with eager, interested eyes.
She stares at Heather, then clears her throat. “Did you hear me scream?” Her voice is hoarse and scratchy.
Heather cocks her head. “You weren’t screaming,” she says. “But I could hear you weeping as I got closer.”
Tasha nods, wipes a hand across her face. “I’m so tired,” she says.
Heather steps all the way into the greenhouse and pushes the door shut behind her. The cold air vanishes. She leans back against the greenhouse door and watches Tasha, not saying anything.
“Candice,” Tasha says, finally. “And Seth.”
Heather nods. “What about them?”
“I think they killed their little boy.”
Heather doesn’t blink. “Do you know that? For sure?”
Tasha wipes angrily at another tear. “No. But before they left, Candice talked about mothers leaving their children on the mountain.”
Heather nods as though it’s the most normal thing in the world. “Yes. I remember that story.”
“I told them to go as far as they could. To try as hard as they could. I should have told them to stay here.”
Heather hasn’t moved from the door. “Sometimes people have to make hard choices, Tasha.”
“What if that had been you?” Tasha cries. Then she stops, horrified. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I meant—”
“You meant, what if my parents had decided to leave me on the mountain when I was born,” Heather says. Her voice is so gentle. “But they didn’t, and now I’m here. I understand.”
“I didn’t—”
“My parents had a hospital that functioned. They had help.”
“I know, but I could have helped them—and Annie—for as long as we needed to—”
“My father used to tell me a story,” Heather continues—looking at Tasha, but also not looking at her—“about a fox that wants children more than anything else in the world. The mountain tells her to go to the flatlands and turn over a rock and the rock will grant her children. But when she does this, the fox sees only worms, and she doesn’t understand at first that the worms are meant to be her children. So she goes to another rock and turns that one over too, and the same thing happens, and it’s only when she returns to the first rock that she realizes what’s supposed to happen. So she welcomes the worms, and they go home with her at the end of the story. And she is very happy.” She shifts her weight from one hip to the other, wincing a little. “I thought it was a beautiful story when I was small. I knew that my father was trying to tell me what it felt like to be the fox, surprised to find herself the mother of children who weren’t what she thought they’d be. She was happy to have them, in the end. And the worms were happy to have her. They built a life together.”
“And then my father died, and in the years after I came down from the mountain I couldn’t think about that story without wanting to scream in rage. Was I a worm? I wanted to yell at him. Was that all I ever was to you?” She raises her hands and strokes the babies’ red curls. “I was angry about that for years,” she says, softly. “And then I had my own babies. And now I just—these things are complicated, Tasha. It takes time to realize that your child is going to have a different life. We don’t really have that time anymore.”
“But we could,” Tasha says fiercely. “We have to make that time. You’re telling me if it had been you—you and Greta and Jilly—”
“I wouldn’t have,” Heather says instantly. “I didn’t.” But something flickers over her face and Tasha is no longer so sure.
“How do I show them?” Tasha whispers. “How do I show them that the only way we survive is by doing this together?”
“I think you have to understand that some people won’t survive,” Heather says. “Or that their choices will be different, and their lives will be different too, as a result.”
“I can’t accept that,” Tasha says flatly. “There are enough of us here who can help one another. There has to be a light at the end. There has to be.”
Heather watches her. “There will be,” she says, finally. “But it’s not going to look like what you expect light to be. You have to get used to that, too.”
Tasha says nothing for a moment, finally aware that she’s kneeling before Heather in nothing but her underwear. “You were right to be angry about that story. You’re worth so much more than a worm.”
Heather only shrugs. “I was angry at him for dying,” she says. “For taking me up on the mountain when he probably shouldn’t have—when he knew it was unsafe. And I was angry at myself for wanting to be the daughter that he wanted me to be. But I was also right, all those years ago, when I was younger. I knew what he meant, even if it wasn’t perfect. Even if he didn’t really understand it—or believe in it, totally—himself. He was trying to tell me that worms are beautiful too—that they shape the world in ways we all need. Without worms, nothing else survives.”
Tasha sits with this for a moment. Then she reaches for her clothes. “Will you walk back with me?”
Heather shakes her head. “I like it here,” she says. “We’ll stay a while longer.”
Tasha nods, then heads back to the city alone.
January becomes February, becomes almost March. The food gifts come less and less. Wizened apples, dented cans.
Six families die over the winter. Flu, the cold, pneumonia. Tasha spends days and nights in the houses of the sick and dying and then, once death comes, she goes back to the greenhouse. She sheds her clothes and kneels in front of the jacaranda tree and lets the madness—grief, anger, despair, whatever it is—take her.