Yesteryear: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel by Caro Claire Burke - 6

In the daylight, it’s easier to see how ramshackle this house truly is. The floorboards are old and rotted. Through the ceiling eaves in the kitchen, I can see slivers of sky. As for the kitchen, it’s as simple as mine at home: a long wooden countertop; a big sink made of cast iron; a series of open shelves holding big containers, each of which I peer into and inspect. Some of the contents I recognize: flour and animal fat and potatoes, jarred peaches and cherries and pears. Then there are containers of seeds and syrups and strange-colored substances I can’t begin to name. “For aches and pains,” the older girl said, when she saw me scrutinizing a jar containing a scarlet-colored syrup. She frowned at me, suddenly watchful. “Do you have a headache?”

I did, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.

In this kitchen, there’s no hidden pantry containing a massive refrigerator, two dishwashers, and a microwave. There’s no laundry room with a shelf of chemical-free, scent-free, dye-free detergents. No bathroom, either. Through the kitchen window I can see a small shed by the chicken coop, undoubtedly an outhouse. (I am actively, at this moment, ignoring the nerve cells screaming upward at my brain about how badly I’d like to use it.)

The floor plan of this house is identical to mine: a small, single-story house, with a large kitchen and living space, and four bedrooms down the hall. The bedrooms are in the same locations, but instead of bunk beds and Pottery Barn bureaus, the children’s rooms have straw mattresses and exposed wooden shelves, each of which holds a few small piles of ratty-looking clothing.

Like a time machine, I keep thinking as I poke my head into every room. Like a bruised and beaten version of my life.

Finally I can’t take it anymore. I approach the girls at the table and say formally, “I need to use the restroom.”

“Then go,” the older girl says, without even turning around.

My head is pounding quietly, a drumbeat reminder of what happened earlier this morning. A good wife doesn’t speak to her husband that way. I step outside onto the porch. The sudden brightness sends a high, arcing warning flare of pain through my skull, which momentarily lights up every thought I’ve ever had, and then just as quickly douses them in darkness. A breeze lifts my hair, cooling my neck. As my eyes adjust to the daylight and the pain recedes, I see that it’s autumn here. The leaves on the trees are a deep golden brown, and the faraway mountains are just barely snowcapped. By mid-November, they’ll be coated in white.

I stare at the mountains, my gaze slowly traveling back to the ranch, over the dips and rolls of thousands of acres of rugged Idaho wilderness, dotted by scrubs of sagebrush and not much else, until finally I reach the far fence line of the crumbling paddocks by the barn. A shabby show of an enclosure, nothing like my fences, which are painted every summer a blinding church-white.

Suddenly one of the boys— door threshold; shorter one; Noah! —walks out of the barn with a horse, guiding him to the paddocks. Our horse. Snickers. Beloved brown and white beast. Only—

No. Not our horse.

It feels like I’m looking at the world through an oil slick.

The horse’s patches are in a slightly different place. The stripe of white on this horse’s nose is wider than the one on Snickers’s, and there’s an extra white patch by his belly.

We should never have bought a horse to begin with. None of us were riders, and I kept telling Caleb to be reasonable, to think about it, to consider for one second how much work a horse would be, but Caleb insisted we would learn, he insisted it was essential, back when he—back when we—

A sudden agoraphobia sweeps over me. The fields, the woods, the mountains. An infinite stretch of land. The Wild, Wild West. Gold rush. Cowboys and Indians. Mountains of dead buffalo. Manifest destiny! Smallpox blankets. Rifles and covered wagons and dust bowls and herds of mustangs and Area 51 and spaceships and aliens, less like Planet Earth and more like Planet Mars—

Suddenly I’m half walking, half jogging across the clearing to the outhouse. I throw open the door and step inside. The stench takes my breath away, but still, I shut the door tightly behind me. I feel like a child again, operating on dream logic: if I keep myself hidden beneath the covers, the monsters won’t see me.

Speaking of children and dream logic—silly, it couldn’t possibly work, but—well—what if it did?

Forgive me, Lord—I have to try.

After I’m finished peeing, I stand up straight, close my eyes, organize my thoughts, and click my heels together three times.

There’s no place like home.

There’s no place like home.

There’s no place like home.

I throw the door open and say, “Shit.”