Abigail <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Something
\nwas there. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAn animal, Abigail was certain, loping in the
\nsagebrush: a twist of fuzz moving through the desert at the edge of her sight.
\nThe morning had already broken a hundred. Her glasses steamed and sunscreen
\nstung her eyes\u2014 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOr maybe she hadn\u2019t
\nseen anything. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nYesterday, while
\nwalking along this desolate irrigation road, she\u2019d spotted a cow skull between
\ntumbleweeds, straight out of a tattoo parlor, but when she ran toward it,
\nbracing to take a picture to send to Eli across the planet\u2014proof, perhaps, that
\nshe ever left the house\u2014she discovered it was just a white plastic grocery bag
\nsnagged on a curl of sage bark. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nSomehow. Way out
\nhere. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe desert was
\nscabby with dark basalt, bristled with the husks of flowers, and nothing was
\never there. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWhen Eli first told
\nher he\u2019d landed a grant to research a rare lake in the Pacific Northwest,
\nAbigail thought ferns <\/i>and rain<\/i>, ale <\/i>and slugs<\/i>, Sasquatch <\/i>and wool<\/i>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAnd then they got
\nhere, to this desert where no one lived. Not a fern or slug in sight. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThis had been the
\nmost turbulent year of her life. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nEleven months ago,
\nthey met. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nSeven months ago,
\nthey married. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nSix months ago,
\nthey moved from her carpeted condo in Denver to this sunbaked town on the
\nshores of Soap Lake, a place where neither knew a soul. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nTheir honeymoon had
\nlasted almost three months\u2014Eli whistling in his downstairs lab, Abigail
\nunpacking and painting upstairs\u2014and then he kissed her at the airport, piled
\nonto a plane, and moved across the world to work in a different lab, on a
\ndifferent project, at a different lake. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nIn Poland. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWhen she remembered
\nhim lately, she remembered photographs of him. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe plan had been
\nto text all the time, daily calls, romantic flights to Warsaw, but the reality
\nwas that Eli had become too busy to chat and seemed more frazzled than ever.
\nThis week had been particularly bad because he\u2019d been off the grid on a
\nresearch trip, so every call went to voicemail, every text into the Polish
\nabyss. And then at five o\u2019clock this morning, her phone pinged and Abigail shot
\nright out of a drowning sleep to grab it, as if he\u2019d tossed her a life
\npreserver from six thousand miles away. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAnd this is what
\nhe\u2019d had to say: <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nsorry
\nmissed you. so much work & my research all fd up. i\u2019ll call this weekend.
\nxo e<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\nAs she was
\ncomposing a response\u2014her phone the only glow in their dark, empty home\u2014he added
\na postscript that stabbed her in the heart like an icicle.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nP.S.
\nmaybe it time since remember using time to figure out self life? <\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWhat kind of a
\nsentence was that? And what was a \u201cself life\u201d anyway? <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAbigail had called
\nhim right away. When he didn\u2019t pick up she went down to the lab he\u2019d set up in
\ntheir daylight basement. She opened a few of his binders with their charts of
\nSoap Lake, their colorful DNA diagrams, their photos of phosphorescent microbes,
\nas cosmic as images from deep space. She breathed the papery dust of his
\nabsence and tried to imagine he\u2019d just stepped out for a minute and would be
\nback in a flash, her clueless brilliant husband, pen between his teeth, hair a
\nsmoky eruption, mustard stains on the plaid flannel bathrobe he wore in place
\nof a lab coat. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nFrom one of his
\ngleaming refrigerators, Abigail retrieved a rack of capped glass tubes that
\ncontained the Miracle Water and the Miracle Microbes collected from the mineral
\nlake down the hill\u2014 she sometimes wondered if her limnologist husband would be
\nmore at home on the shores of Loch Ness\u2014and held one until a memory arose, like
\na visit from a friend: Eli, lifting a water sample up to the window as if he
\nwere gazing through a telescope, shaking it so it fizzed and foamed. And then
\nhe was gone again. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nShe hated that she
\ndid this. Came down here and caressed his equipment like a creep. Next she\u2019d be
\nsmelling his bathrobe, collecting hairs from his brush. It was as if she felt
\ncompelled to remind herself that Eli was doing important work and, as the months
\nof distance piled up, that he was even real. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nBack when they\u2019d
\nfirst started dating, Abigail had been the busy one, the one who said yes to
\nher boss too much and had to skim her calendar each time Eli wanted to go to
\ndinner or a movie. Of course her job as an administrative assistant in a title
\ninsurance office had never felt like enough, but when she mentioned this
\nrestlessness to Eli, finding her path\u2014figure out self life\u2014had suddenly become
\na centerpiece of their move to Soap Lake. But they got here and nothing had
\nhappened. It wasn\u2019t just a switch you flipped. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAbigail slid the
\ntall tube of lake water back into its rack. Only when she let go, the tube
\nsomehow missed its slot and plunged to the floor like a bomb. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nKapow!<\/span><\/i> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOn the tile between
\nher feet, a blossom of cloudy water and shattered glass. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nShe stood over the
\nmess, clicking her fingernails against her teeth and imagining microbes
\nsquealing on the floor, flopping in the air like miniscule goldfish. She told
\nherself, without conviction, it had been an accident. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAnd then she
\nstepped over the spill, put the rack back in the fridge and, surprised at the
\nimmediacy of her shame, went for a walk in this scorching desert. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nIt stunned her, how
\nharsh and gorgeous it was. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nLoneliness: it felt
\nsometimes like it possessed you. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nShe hadn\u2019t spoken
\nto anyone in over a month, outside of a few people in the Soap Lake service
\nindustry. There was the guy who made her a watery latte at the gas station the
\nother morning, then penised the back of her hand with his finger when he passed
\nit over. And the newspaper carrier, an old woman with white braids and a pink
\ncowgirl hat, who raced through town in a windowless minivan. She told Abigail
\nshe was one DUI away from unemployment, but the weekly paper was never late.
\nAnd the cute pizza delivery dude who was so high he sat in her driveway on his
\nphone for half an hour before coming to the door with her cold cheese pizza,
\nsaying, Yes, ma\u2019am. Thanks, ma\u2019am, which was sweet but totally freaked her out.
\nAnd the lady with the painted boomerang eyebrows in the tampon aisle at the
\ngrocery store who gave her unwanted advice on the best lube around for spicing
\nup menopause, to which Abigail guffawed and responded too loudly, \u201cThanks, but
\nI\u2019m not even goddamned forty!\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAt least she\u2019d
\ndiscovered these maintenance roads: miles and miles of gravel and dirt, no
\nvehicles allowed, running alongside the massive irrigation canals that brought
\nCanadian snowmelt from the Columbia River through the Grand Coulee Dam to the
\nfarms spread all over this desert. The water gushed through the main canals,
\nthirty feet wide and twenty feet deep, and soon branched off to other, smaller
\ncanals that branched off to orchards and fields and ranches and dairies and
\nsoil and seeds and sprouts and leaves and, eventually, yummy vital food:
\ngrocery store shelves brimming with apples and milk and pizza-flavored
\nPringles. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nGood soil. Blazing
\nsun. Just add water and food was born. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAlmost a trillion
\ngallons a year moved through these canals. T: trillion<\/i>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAll that water way
\nout here, pouring through land so dry it crackled underfoot. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nShe halted on the
\nroad. Pressed her lank, brown hair behind her ear. Definitely heard something,
\na faint yip or caw. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nShe scanned the
\nhorizon for the source of the sound and there it was again, a smudge of
\nmovement in the wavering heat. Something running away. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nA few times out
\nhere she\u2019d seen coyote. Lots of quail, the occasional pheasant. Once, in a
\nfallow field close to town, a buck with a missing antler that looked from a
\ndistance like a unicorn. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nNot running away<\/i>, the smudge out there. Running toward<\/i>. She was nowhere near a signal
\nyet her instinct was to touch her phone. She craned around to glimpse the
\nvanishing point of the road behind, gauging how far she\u2019d walked and, if things
\ngot bad, how far she\u2019d have to run. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThree miles,
\nminimum. Six miles, tops. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nDefinitely
\napproaching. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nNot something<\/i>. Someone<\/i>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nA human. Alone. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nRunning. A boy. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nA little boy.
\nSprinting. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAbigail froze as
\ntheir eyes met, and suddenly the boy exploded out of the desert, slamming into
\nher thighs with an oof!<\/i> He wore
\nyellow pajamas and Cookie Monster slippers covered in prickly burrs. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nHe clung to her
\nlegs so tightly that she almost tipped over. When she registered the crusty
\nblood on his chin and cheeks and encasing his hands like gloves, she felt
\nherself begin to cry, scared-to-sobbing in one second flat. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nDeep breath. Shirt
\nwipe. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u201cHey! Are you hurt?
\nLook at me. Are you hurt<\/i>?\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe boy wasn\u2019t
\ncrying, but his skin was damp and he was panting hot and wouldn\u2019t let go of her
\nlegs. She felt a hummingbird inside of his chest. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nShe knelt in the
\ngravel and unfolded his arms, turning them over at the wrist. She lifted his
\nshirt and spun him around as best she could. He had some welts and scratches
\nfrom running through the brush, and the knees of his pj\u2019s were badly scuffed,
\nbut he wasn\u2019t cut, not anywhere serious, which meant\u2014 The blood belonged to
\nsomeone else.<\/span><\/span>
<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEha761Q_QzDX5mLWEsoYmEa_bx39M0XCMYyZATDTUPVC8UWTNexaDDMM6OG6k2TYAQIp8Epr825IE-k2B8XOhto0ClDy6HwbRPbFl-S8iqsQPyzTnIz0zvzjoIuhYy0RXlquzMCepXcI5Bi-XPG1Cht7LgbxXmUDpGt9mYobYv6VoagQudZO7u8Ff4yFAoI\/s1600\/710-HTP-Banner---Winter-2025(6).jpg\")
\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n