The Daughters: A Novel by Adrienne Celt

still and finished the last of my champagne. Considered drinking John’s too, but thought better of it. At the front of the restaurant, John laughed with the waitress as he handed her a credit card and signed the slip. To look at him, you’d never know he was angry—would never know he’d ever been angry in his life.
    T he day of Finn’s party I woke up early, the sun softer and warmer in the dawn than it had been the afternoon before. I was alone but hadn’t been for long—the pillow beside me was depressed in the telltale shape of Finn’s head, and still smelled like him, dust and musk. There was a shape lodged in my throat, making it hard for me to draw normal breath. A heart, beating. A small animal, curled in a ball. I rolled into the hollow Finn had left in the sheets, masking his scent with my own.
    The fire, the smoke. I’d known it would cause problems. Sinking into the mattress, I pulled the duvet up over my ears, hoping that a little more rest would clean me out. Wash away all remnants of the previous evening.
    On its surface, the ranch was rustic—it told the story of a Mexican hacienda, with small orange and pink casitas dotting the land around the main estate. When I first rode into the courtyard, my gameness for adventure had stuttered, as I imagined scratchy woven blankets and hard wooden chairs. But the antique touches were just for show. One layer down, everything here had been built for comfort.
    Still, I couldn’t find sleep—still, despite my bed and its deep well of feathers, despite the crisp sheets. No matter how I arranged myself, I was too aware of my body. Tiny hairs crackling on the back of my neck. Ribs abutting stomach and spleen. The memory of a finger tracing a line down my back. I felt too alive, too touched to drift off.
    And then there was the issue of my throat, that shadow shape.
    Get out, I thought. But it sat firm, small bean. Silent passenger.
    With a sigh, I sat up, holding the blanket around my shoulders.A window beside me allowed in streams of light where a triangle of curtain had been folded back—when? Finn had wanted to show me constellations. Finn had crept out in the morning, perhaps before the sun bled into the sky.
    Outside nothing tempered the landscape. Cactus and rock, bone and tree, jutted from the earth where and how they wished. Contradictions refused explanation: the sky through my window was clear, but the sand was speckled with rainwater, the scent of which lay over the morning like a shawl. What are you doing here? The question came to me from the air. And I remembered.
    The stage. A real reason, a good reason, to have come all this way. To have pushed and pulled John into a fight, and then tumbled down after him, much further than I expected to go.
    I pulled on jeans and a long cotton shirt, hasty dress against the wind. My plan was simple, if vague: find the right path and reach my destination. If there was a path, that is. Knowing what I did about Finn, it was entirely possible that the stage was hidden and we’d need to be led there by some sort of native guide. He liked a show. Though at least he had no trouble admitting that. No hesitation about telling you what was a performance and what was real as breathing.
    As luck would have it, I slipped outside without meeting anyone else in the hacienda. An hour later and the other guests would all have been out to waylay me. Polite hellos. Curiosity. I’d have had to look at their bodies and try to map the sensations in mine to possibilities in theirs. Like coded words being translated back to ordinary meaning.
    A bruised lip. The strange heat on my thighs. My neck, cooler than usual where the wind hit it. And my hair, which felt tugged—my whole scalp loosened. My body raggedy and strange, and beautiful.
    That’s what I felt, anyway, when I only read the pleasure.
    Outside I looked around myself for some orientation. There was a promising path down by the fire pit, and lacking any greater insight, I