barely laid any. Bess ducked inside the wooden structure. Their finest hens, Rosie and Cluckers, slept soundly in their nesting boxes. Bess dug underneath them, searching for an egg. She sifted through piles of hay. Please let me find one. All I need is one. She checked every nest, but they all turned up empty. Bess inched along the path, heading to the house. The sun eased its way closer to the hills. She stopped and embraced the rays warming her pale skin. A cool breeze sent goosebumps over her arms, and the smell of the lilac bushes blew through the yard. Bess shivered, tucking her hands into her pockets. Her fingertips touched something cold and rough. Bess fondled her keys. The girls were inside their room, playing. Del lounged in his chair, sipping his beer and waiting on his biscuits. The turkey was ready to be pulled from the oven. Bess crept along the porch and tiptoed past Del’s truck to her Honda. She eased the door open and slid into the seat, pulling it shut. The silence hurt her ears. She placed the keys in the ignition. A knock blasted against the car window. “Bess?” Del peered in, his face inches from the glass. “Where are you going?” Bess stared ahead, her hands frozen on the steering wheel. Del pounded his fist against the windshield. Trembling, she rolled down the window. “I— I was just heading up the road to borrow an egg from Connie. We’re out,” she said, her insides churning. “I’ll be right back.” Del bit his lip and studied her face. “Don’t take too long,” he said. “I’m
hungry.” Bess started the engine and pulled onto the road. She watched as their farmhouse grew smaller and smaller in the rearview until it disappeared. The Miller’s rusty mailbox came into focus along the road's right side, the little red arrow standing straight up. Bess drove right on past it. She drove past the cornfields and past Foster’s endless rows of apple trees. Veering left at the fork, she pulled around a green tractor throwing up clouds of dust and began driving north on Highway 109. A honey-colored Jersey cow, munching on grass, lifted its head as she passed. The land transformed into grassy rolling fields. Bess kept driving. Cars parked end-to-end lined the side of the highway outside Lena’s property. Bess found her spot between a gray minivan and a white coupe. She grabbed her mask from the glovebox and stepped out into the dusky evening, marching along the wooden fence surrounding the land. A breeze traveled over her skin and carried the faint sound of women’s voices with it. The red building came into view as she grew closer. The barn appeared bigger than Bess last remembered it, the peak of the roof sharp as a point, the white and tan cupola extending toward the heavens. The wind spun the arrow on the black metal weathervane round and round. The rooster above it, standing firm, glared down at her. Light poured through a crack in the tall barn doors, illuminating the damp ground outside. Laughing and cheering from inside carried through the air. Bess approached the building and knocked. “What’s your name?” A woman she
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hadn’t seen before peered out through a slit in the door. “Bess,” she said, glancing around. “Bessie Tompkins.” “Just a minute.” The woman disappeared. Bess waited. She noticed three figures in the shadows near a broken water trough. The barn door opened partway, and the woman stepped aside to let Bess pass. Bess placed her palm on the rough wooden doorframe, turning sideways. She slipped in. The stench of manure invaded her nostrils. Deafening shouts and cheers echoed off the barn walls. Ladies, some Bess recognized and some she didn’t, sat along the hay bales placed in semi-circular rows. Lena slouched against a weathered ladder leading up to the loft. Shades of navy and red in her flannel matched her cowboy boots. Her fiery curls billowed around her thin shoulders. Bess rushed over to her side. “It’s so good to see you, Bess,” Lena’s booming voice escaped through her American flag mask. She hugged a brown clipboard close to her chest. “Are you interested in signing up tonight?” “I hadn’t planned on it, but—” Bess shouted. She noticed Daisy Parker and Tammy Buckley, the pastor’s wife, sitting with the rest of the ladies among the bricks of straw. “I think I will.” Lena slid a blue ballpoint pen from the back pocket of her tight blue jeans. She scribbled Bess’s name down and returned to the ladder. Bess maneuvered through the hollering women, dry straw crunching under each step. She eased herself down onto
