HIDDEN ON A GRASSY MATTRESS IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIELD OF GOLDEN PRAIRIE GRASS, Dolores Dandy and Roland Atter are having sex. To him, the sex is romantic. To her, desperate. He isn't wearing a condom, but it doesn't matter because she's already pregnant. The baby's not his.

At the exact same moment, a letter, addressed in black, inky cursive, is sitting unopened in Dolores's mailbox. That letter follows verbatim:

Listen to me. Let me take it all back; I love you.

What had gotten into me, I'll never know. I was a wreck, hopeless, nervous, and moving away. I should've been there for you and still should be. I'm sorry. You know how I get sometimes; I shut down. I promise, I love you.

Are you still thinking about keeping the baby? I'm not insinuating anything. It's just that two months is a long time, and you're decisive, sometimes impulsive.

If you are, are you still drinking? You shouldn't be. The baby might come out wrong.

Me? I've been better. I guess I just don't know that I'm myself here, or who I am in general. It isn't that I'm lonely, at least not in the traditional definition—I've gotten drinks with some co-workers a couple of times, but I don't know that anyone here understands me or wants to. I'm alone in my head, and it's a scary place to be.

Me, a father. Can you imagine? I hope so.

I need you. I love you. I'll come back and spend the rest of my life with you, if that's what you want.

Please write back.

Orv—

Unreplied, this letter has been stowed away, carefully hidden but not forgotten inside a copy of the Lutheran Hymnal in a desk drawer in the Dandy-Atters' guest bedroom.

It's been six years.

· · ·

Forest Meadows is a slice of suburbia in transition. In the last quarter of the twentieth-century, dozens of middle-class families and one city councilman lived in up-kept two-story houses. Their deep lawns were watered daily, maintained by hired lawn services or shirtless fathers. Bricked, cylinder mailboxes the size of cookie monsters hinting at aspiring affluence.

But now, just a two decades later, with the ghetto encroaching into the township, lower-middle class families settle for cracked and beaten sidewalks, lawns patched with crab-grass and dandelions, missing-shingled roofs, and year-round Christmas lights to avoid seasonal effort.

Orville Alberts bicycles north on the neighborhood's winding street. The leaves in the trees are boasting bold shades in the chill autumn air: orange, red, and brown. He turns down a cul-de-sac, one of many that spread away from main street and brakes at an overgrown rose bush and uses long nails to pinch off one wilting bud.

A Google-searched, hyphenated last name and address, a Craig's List advertisement, and a mixture of hope, curiosity, and desperation has brought him to Dolores's yard. After all these years, he'd been surprised to find her still in Rackle, the city a 45-minute drive from the rural town they'd grown up in. She'd always dreamt big about the world outside of the Midwest and wanting to go and be a part of it, change it. A journalist without motive. But life and pregnancy has a way of changing expectations.

He stuffs the flower, thorns and all, into the breast pocket of his fitted button-down and walks his bike up her cracked driveway.

· · ·

"You know who I bumped into at that little art fair in Emdly last weekend?" Dolores Dandy-Atter asks her husband, interrupting his concentration. He is pouring a full bottle of Crown Royal into an empty one of Pappy Van Winkle, thinking just like that, this whiskey ages fourteen years.

The bottle's only half-full when he spills.

"God damn it, Dolores! Couldn't you just shut up for thirty-fucking-seconds? Fuck. It's on the carpet." Dolores doesn't look up from the little Sudoku booklet she is filling out with a blue-ink pen that she twirls through the fingers of her left hand. Her legs tumble from underneath her down the couch. She realizes he should be using a funnel.

"Maggy Hooper--from the TV," she says now. Her husband's speed drying the blue carpet with a dish rag and fast, vertical back-and-forths. "Imagine me," she elaborates, almost dreamily. "Walking with no particular direction through the little tents looking at hand-made jewelry and cutesy, out-of-place, midsummer knitted caps." She pauses, sighs. "I stepped into a tent just brimming with oil paintings of sail boats—in storms, tied at the dock, with people—a captain maybe, tons of things. And there she was, Maggy Hooper, to my right, peacock hair and all." None of what she's said had actually happened. Dolores’s lying and biting the skin on the inside of her mouth.

"Who's Maggy Hooper?" her husband replies, uninterestedly tickling the conversation's belly. He is back standing, bottle over bottle, acting with a NO-MAN-FAILS-TWICE mentality. But between his split concentration of his wife's chirping, the pouring, a constant uninvited sorrowing at his sexless marriage, and the ring of the door bell, he overloads, spills for a second time. He should've used a funnel, he realizes.

"God damn it! Can you give a guy a fucking break? Sixty-fucking seconds! That's all I'm askin'—." Indignant, Dolores closes her book and crosses her arms over her chest, for a second silent, but then says, "get yourself cleaned up and throw that rag in the laundry, and I'll see who's at the door."

She's patient with him for the sake their daughter, though in honesty, she struggles with despise and regret. After blowing an empty kiss, she strides from the living room.

When Dolores opens the front door, she's startled to see a man whose girlish grin looks distantly familiar to her. He is holding a FOR SALE by owner sign with the Dandy-Atter phone number written on it. The man's tight Khakis are brown, his shirt white with blue checkers. In a moment of social confusion, he runs his fingers through the thick, groomed beard that dominates his face.

"Hi." His voice, albeit chipper, is withdrawn, nervous. "My name's Orville Alberts, and I might be interested in your sailboat here."

He feels fluttery, real funny, but maintains his composure.

Dolores, however, flushes red with recognition and disbelief, partially out of fear, and entirely humiliated by the immediacy of the encounter.

"One second. Sorry!" Dolores closes the door hard and spins around like an actress in a movie. "Roland, sweetheart, there's a man here who says he might be interested in the boat!"

"What time is it? At this hour?" He asks, strolling over. He's changed into a pair of less-sticky blue jeans and a cotton sweater that makes him look porky.

Dolores opens the door again. The man's grin has disappeared, but seems no less the friendly sailboat buyer.

What did he think, he could just come to my house and steal me away? After all this time, why? She can't help but acknowledge an upside-downness to her stomach resembling a rare moment of marital excitement.

"Mr. Alberts, come in, come in. You must be freezing. It must be freezing out there. And they call this late-September," Roland bellows. Roland's a plumber by trade, but in this moment resembles more closely a used car salesman.

Orville steps deliberately through the door frame, rubbing his chapped hands together, adjusting.

"Let me take that coat of yours," Dolores says tersely, trying to sound normal.

Orville pulls off his brown, summer windbreaker in one motion, handing it to Dolores. Their fingers brush, faintly and longingly. He pulls a late-bloom, red rose from his breast pocket and sniffs it, before returning it to its pocket and placing his hand on his forehead and sweeping downward across his face.

"I could come back if this isn't a good time?" Orville offers.

Dolores laughs, then answers. "Who us? This neighborhood? It never sleeps."

This is no exaggeration. Forest Meadows is full of meticulous retired Protestants. Oh, welcome to the neighborhood, they'd greeted her, Well, aren't those just lovely tattoos. We baked you a pie. She wouldn't be surprised if they came rapping on her door the next day and telling her with high pretentiousness how they'd all observed a beautiful, young homeless man wandering around at this hour and were wondering whether she didn't know something about that.

"Let's sit. Care for anything to drink? Roland, honey, go fetch a tray, will you?" Dolores isn't sure if he hears her.

"So Orv, can I call you Orv?" Roland asks.

"Orville's fine."

"Okay, Orville, tell me. How did you hear about my Cape Dorey?"

"Craig's List."

"Oh, right, right."

"Really Roland. Where are our manners? Go fetch a tray," Dolores says. Roland nods and disappears through a door to the kitchen.

Orville says something incomprehensible but polite, and he steps slowly from the stain-wooded vestibule into the living room in response to the either nudging or comforting palm on the small of his back.

"I've missed you," Orville whispers.

"Not so loud," Dolores whispers back, and then admits loudly, "Thank you so much! But we don't even use it often—the fireplace!" She sits sprawled barefoot on the custard-coloured sofa.

Instead of sitting, Orville wanders to a bookshelf on the far side of the room, keeping his back mostly to Dolores, examining a painting of a little girl with blue eyes and a matching dress holding her hands over her ears.

"Aren't you you l-lonely?" he stammers.

"He we are!" Roland reemerges, balancing on his hand a silver serving tray holding two empty cocktail shooters and a round-bottomed red-filled wine glass—Dolores's second, which he sets on the same side table as an expensive whiskey bottle. "Orville Alberts! A pleasure, all mine, I'm tellin’ yah." Roland's voice carries as if he's trying to communicate a matter-of-fact seriousness, and he's sticking out his right hand to shake a second time. "So back to business. My Cape Dorey, yeah? She's a beaut, really something. All original finish. It'll break my heart to have to see her go, but we got ridda the barn, and now don't have a place to store her over the winter. Mmhmm," he says. Orville catches Dolores's rolling eyes. "Just one spider-crack on the stern," Roland concludes. His eye twitches indiscriminately, a shy, lazy eye hiding behind the lenses of his glasses. "Business, excuse me. Where're my manners? A whiskey? Single malt from the Irish Isles—"

"Just water's fine, thanks." Orville observes critically his shoes, fully tied.

Roland nods, walking curiously to the kitchen muttering, "What kind of sailor prefers water over whiskey?"

When her husband was outside the room, Dolores asks, "What do you mean 'Am I lonely,' Orville? I haven't even heard from you in years, and you just show up one day, Orville?" She is sitting with her legs bent near her chest. Her hands clutch her wine, and she takes a quick, frustrated sip.

"You're the one who never responded to any of my letters!" Orville accuses.

"So what! You should've came anyway! You would've if you'd cared," she says. In her voice is hurt and long-repressed frustration.

Orville turns and examines her face for first time since he'd arrived. Touch-up tries, albeit with partial success, to mask the bags and crows' feet. Her face is thin and tight, and her eyebrows are neatly trimmed, auburn, matching her hair, which is straggly and sprinkled with grey. Her belled pants also match her hair colour, though a shade or two darker. She might've been beautiful once, and maybe even still could be now, but for the stretched, decaying sleeves of tattoos that cover her arms.

"'Am I lonely?' Orv, I have a family, I mean—."

That's when he notices a little girl in denim overalls standing in the corner of the room wearing a cream-coloured lampshade over her head. Her pigtails hang shoulder length, and her hands tumble Jango with a knotty piece of ruby-coloured yarn. She giggles in the stupefied silence, overly cognizant of an atmospheric discomfort. It is vivid and romantic to Orville not to have yet noticed this pigtailed daughter slash room fixture.

"Ainsley, come to Mommy now, please," Dolores commands.

The child, pulling off the lampshade and setting it delicately on the floor, looks at Orville. "Lellow Horsecream!" she cries excitedly and skitters over to the couch, sitting cross-legged Indian-styled on the floor.

Dolores, taking another sip and setting her glass down, begins playing Piggly Wiggly with her fingers through her daughter's hair.

Orville lallops speechless over to the adjacent sofa. He is mystified. The long-imagined child. The reason for their breakup. Not his, she'd told him. Wondering whether the child is a simpleton or a prodigy, Orville pours himself a glass of whiskey and swallows the antidote whole. He can't stop staring at the face of this child, Ainsley Klair Dandy-Atter. Such innocence. Befuddled, he clenches the arm of the sofa.

"And a water for the—Oh. Fancied a whiskey after all? I should say—"

"Excuse me, Mr. Dandy-Atter, but could I, uh, u-use your b-bathroom?" Orville asks.

"Down the hall on your left." Roland responds. He feels duped and after Orville stumbles away says, "Dolores, Love, what happened? Is he crying? I think I hear him crying."

Down the hall, a door slams.

Roland sits down on the vacant couch and pours himself a shot, gulps it down, and pours a second. First, Dolores curls her lower lip inward on top of her middle teeth, a nervous habit since braces. Then she takes a long sip of her wine, luxuriating in the taste. There is a conversational void, and instead of the adults', it's Ainsley's voice that fills it.

"Mommy, how do you know that man?"

Dolores does her best to control her surprise, but blushes slightly. She turns to Roland, confuses her face, and shrugs her left shoulder nonchalantly.

"What'ya mean pumpkin? I don't know him," she says.

· · ·

Orville slams the door too hard, he realizes. Not giving a damn.

On the immediate left is a marble basin. He grasps and leans his weight on it while searching feverishly for rationality in his mirrored reflection.

A daughter? A daughter. My daughter? Orville splashes water on his face, breathing hard and becoming light headed.

He finds comfort on a nearby ceramic toilet seat. His head is between his legs. The room is spinning. He uses his right hand to tear away bath tissue. Rubbing his cheek, drying the rush of tears.

He reaches into his pocket unabashed for the pill bottle. Push twist. Tilt. One blue, two whites. Tongue and water. Swallow. He sits on the floor leaning against the bathtub. Panting with blurred vision, he imagines the words Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter! written in lipstick on the mirror above the sink.

Look at him. No wonder nobody loves him, the useless piece of shit.

Orville is thinking about Ainsley: How old is she? What does she like? What does she not like? He tries to think back to his own childhood, but it's too long ago. And all that comes to mind is the colour red, as in blood, and things that he's long repressed. He remembers why he'd freaked out and left Dolores, young and pregnant.

It's not your's, she'd said, but he knew she was lying with thick skin trying to protect herself. He could always tell when she was lying because when she lied she used to gnaw on the skin on the inside of her mouth.

And he remembered not telling her he knew she was lying.

And he remembered moving away two days later because that was planned before either of them knew she was pregnant.

And he remembered how the barrier of distance empowered him to write love letters and apologizes, because they were empty and wouldn't make any difference because he'd never have the courage to return to Rackle.

Orville couldn't have been a father then because he hadn't been ready. And he still can't because he's still not ready, but he's here now. He's impulsive and unstable. All he can think about is Dolores.

A habit of motion, his fingers find a cigarette, and a spark is never far behind.

· · ·

By this time, several minutes had past. Ainsley has wandered away from her mother and the sofa and is somersaulting in the corner. Roland is worried, but clueless. After all, he was much too rational to believe a five-year-old's pretense that his wife was previously acquainted with the stranger who is currently crying in their bathroom. Dolores is worried because she lacks control over the situation.

"Mom! Watch. Mom!"Ainsley sings playfully. "I'm a rolie-polie-olie!" she says, meaning a pill bug.

"That's lovely, Pumpkin. Really," Dolores says.

"Should we go in and check on him? It's been what, 10 minutes? More?" Roland asks. He's panicking in his usual way. His primary concern is that he's liable if something were to happen. "Maybe he needs a doctor."

"He's fine. I mean, I'm sure—well, actually I don't really know, but it probably has something to do with the boat sale still, right? A hesitant buyer making a calculated decision?" Dolores presumes. She passively waves her wrist, indicating nothing.

She fumbles with the silk fabric of her white blouse. "I'll go check on him. You stay here," she says to Roland.

Before he can respond, she stands up, then calls in her daughter's direction. "Ainsley, honey. Aren't you just darling? Sweetheart, pay attention. Mommy's speaking." Ainsley perks up. "It's past your bedtime." After brief consideration, Ainsley slinks to her mother's side. They turn the corner down the hall.

· · ·

"Orville?" Dolores raps sympathetically on the bathroom door. "You okay?" she asks. Ainsley clings to her mother's other hand.

"I think he's crying, Ainsley whispers.

More silence.

"Let's put you in bed." Dolores says. Her knuckles knock twice more in quick succession. "I'll be back in a minute, okay?"

Mother and daughter continue to daughter's room, pink, where Ainsley strips and dons polka dot jammies, pink, while Dolores parachute-spreads the jumble of sheets and quilts, pink.

Ainsley climbs under the covers, which her mother tucks under the mattress. They lean to kiss cheeks. At the light switch, Dolores pauses customarily. "Sweet dreams, Ainsley."

"Mom, wait." Ainsley sits up.

Dolores sighs through her teeth because there’re more pressing matters. She's never liked it when Orville acted this way, locking himself up, feeling 'funny'—all that.

"Orville." Ainsley continues. "Why is he crying? How do you know him?" Her voice is mellow, considerate.

Dolores thinks for a second. "I'll tell you when you're older, okay? Goodnight, Love." Dolores clicks the light off and shuts the door behind her.

She is almost to the bathroom door when a smoke alarm blares.

"Shit," she says disdainfully, and the door unlocks, swinging inward. A billow of smoke, steam and a nose-wiping, snuffling Orville Alberts emerges. The shower hasn't been turned off.

He looks at Dolores. His look is earnest, filled with embarrassment and hurt.

"I'm fine," he says.

"Orville, what the hell has happened to you? What the hell's happening?"

"I should go—I never should've come." He pushes at the carpet with the toe of his right shoe.

"What's this even about?" she asks.

"I should go." Orville turns and walks the way he'd come. Roland, drink in hand, feelin' it, is fast approaching.

"The fuck's goin on?" He thunders. Orville walks passed unabated. Roland stops, pivots, and grabs Orville by the shoulder. "The fuck're you doin’?"

"Roland, could you just handle the alarm?" Dolores encourages. Her voice calm, but forthright."I'm just going to see Mr. Alberts out."

"And is that drugs I smell?" Roland accuses. He's pissed, but when he looks at Dolores and sees that glare in her eyes, the one that says 'you better fucking listen to me,' he lets go of Orville's shoulder and cooperates.

Orville rushes to get his coat, is reaching for the doorknob, but Dolores grabs it first.

Pausing.

"We'll talk, okay? Hey," she says. Orville is downcast. She bumps up his chin with her knuckles. "Look at me." Orville looks at her. His eyes are swollen from crying, he smells of cigarette smoke, and his gaze is distant. Understanding through paralysis. Often times in life, there's nothing you can do.

"We'll talk, OK?" Dolores repeats. Orville nods. She pulls the door inward, and Orville steps out. "Goodnight, Orville."

"Dolores," Orville says. "She's my daughter too." He's once more on the verge of tears, outcast. Her grin is steady, empathetic.

"Since when, Orville?" she says. "Take care of yourself." Dolores closes the door.

· · ·

The sun had set, though it is not altogether late. The air is heavy with the smell of a looming rain, bounding to bursting. Cold has set in along with a wet stillness that can get inside of a lonely soul and fuck with it.

Thunder cracks.

Orville half-walks, half-stumbles along the curved, cement path leading to the driveway where he's faced with option: Left, down the driveway and onto the rest of his life, or right, to where a patch of shadow veils the Cape Dory.

It is in this moment, turning right, that Orville, for the first time, actually considers buying the sailboat, spider-crack and all.