Yukiko dreamt she was searching for Priscilla because she could hear her crying somewhere. A storm was gathering, and in the distance, a sheet of rain stretched from the clouds to the land. It was coming closer, the rain, and she kept thinking, “When is it going to hit? When am I going to get soaked?” Then in the unexplainable way she became aware of her dreams while she was still in them, she thought, “This is a dream, and Priscilla is actually crying somewhere.”
She woke to rain pelting the windows and flashes of lightning illuminating her room. She got up and went to Priscilla, who was splayed out in the dog bed and crying, her head whipping back and forth. Yukiko knelt and touched her.
“Priscilla, wake up,” she said.
Priscilla opened her eyes, and she seemed confused, as if she were wondering why it was Yukiko, not Sam. But after a moment of hesitation, she fell into Yukiko’s arms, and Yukiko held her until she was asleep again, till her breathing was slower and steadier.
Now what? Yukiko thought. She didn’t know where Sam was, and she couldn’t just sit there all night, holding Priscilla. She desperately needed to sleep. But she knew if she tried to put Priscilla back in the dog bed, she would wake up. So she mustered her strength and carried Priscilla to the bed, laying her down and curling herself around her, a shell over a nut, the nuttiest nut. It was lovely and warm, and they both fell asleep, and they stayed that way until the morning, when Yukiko woke to find Priscilla still in her arms.
They ate breakfast, and then Priscilla wanted to go outside. She played on the structure in her pajamas, scrambling up the rock-climbing wall, darting across the bridge and shooting down the slide. Yukiko drank her coffee and watched the birds, who were flitting from bush to bush and making a terrible racket. The lilacs were blooming white and purple, giving off their powerful fragrance. Next week the blooms would be spent, leaving the bushes dull and sparse, the bottom branches exposed like the skinny legs of an old lady. They had been Lyle’s idea, those bushes. Their smell had reminded him of his childhood.
“How about hydrangeas?” she had said. “They bloom all summer, and they’re so easy to take care of.”
He seemed to accept this suggestion, and she thought they would soon be buying hydrangeas, but one afternoon she came home and found a row of young lilacs planted along the fence, twelve in all. And Lyle was there, his pants caked with mud and his shirt off, thrown on the grass. When he saw Yukiko he waved his arms out toward the lilacs like he was presenting a prize.
“What do you think?” he said.
“I think those are not hydrangeas.”
“Hydrangeas don’t have that smell, you know?”
“I know.”
“You like them, right?”
“You’ve given me no choice.” His face fell when she said that, and she went in the house, too angry to remain. When she turned to pull the sliding door closed, she noticed he was staring at the ground and stabbing it aimlessly with the shovel. Like a chastened kid. She wished now she had been more forgiving. She could have planted hydrangeas in any other place—the yard was huge—but she never did. Instead, she nursed her resentment over the lilacs, fuming about them all over again with every spring, every lavender bloom. She had wasted much of her life.
Yukiko went inside for more coffee and when she came out, she couldn’t see Priscilla or Sophie, and she panicked. “Priscilla?” she shouted. Nothing. Birds alighted from a bush, making it tremble, and then everything was quiet. She shouted again, her voice echoing. She rushed down the steps and into the yard, toward the play structure. She tripped on something and almost went down and wrenched her back. And then suddenly there was Priscilla, coming out of the playhouse, marching across the bridge, and Sophie was behind her, wagging herself along. Yukiko’s heart did a somersault. Priscilla was still here. Still hers, she thought, knowing this to be wrong in the objective sense, but it didn’t matter. She would do whatever it took to keep her. Somehow, Priscilla would become her child. She would make sure of it.
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