It got hard to think of what to say when they were out walking. Hard to carve time to write something important. The letters they got felt essential and full of information. But what information could they impart to their families in the City? After all this time—how many more sunsets could they describe? And often, whatever they offered was met with hostility: I don’t understand a thing about where you are or frankly why you’re there. Why don’t you come home?

Now they wrote letters at Post that were simple, noncontroversial: Not much new to report. We’re heading to the mountains before the snows come. Sending love. They’d begun just using the postcards that all the Posts carried, that showed a pretty view of the Wilderness State. They sat out for visitors to take, but what visitors? The cards did a much better job of conveying something to people in the City. No one ever commented on the picture in response letters, though. It was as though they didn’t even look at it, or imagined it was just a stock image unrelated to the life of the Community, and not the real thing they were sending letters to or getting letters from. But it was real. It was the canyon they’d spent part of their first year traversing. They’d lost Jane and Sam there. They’d perfected smoking their meat. They discovered that when the water was fast it was fine to drink without the iodine tablets they’d been using, thanks to their guinea pig Dr. Harold. They’d learned Dr. Harold liked being a guinea pig. They’d become better at navigating by stars, and in the canyon was where Debra began sewing their clothes from animal hides with Carl’s sinew. The place was meaningful to them, but they couldn’t convince the people they were writing to of that. It felt absurd to say, Jane was swept away in a flash flood along with our best knife in this very canyon. The people they were writing to would never get that, even though they’d been sad to lose Jane because she was a good singer, the thing they pined for to this day was that knife.

The picture was of the ragged red cliffs snaking toward the horizon, and of the green-leafed poplars that ran the length of the river, the river that ran cold and clean and sometimes shallowed itself over expanses of limestone so that for miles they could walk in the river and it only went up to their shins. Yes, they’d lost Jane and Sam there, but in the canyon they’d been happy.

She saw Glen with a stack of envelopes she recognized as being from the University, and she saw him getting agitated as he read. He still got the minutes from department meetings and the decisions they made in his absence drove him mad. “Don’t read them,” Bea had said once. “But it’s mail,” he’d responded, his nose in the pages.

She saw a small pile of unclaimed envelopes on the counter. They were probably from her mother, a backlog of newspaper clippings about oddities of life in the City, gossip from her bridge club, a tearstained note card begging her to return. She wasn’t ready to read them yet.

She got Juan’s attention and brought him to the vending machine. He made a snake of masking tape and the rolled card-stock packaging from the light bulbs and pulled chewy granola bars out as easily as if he were pulling them from a box with his hand.

“You’re a magician,” said Bea, gathering the granola bars in the pouch of her tunic.

Juan smiled. “Mamá would be proud,” he said.

They distributed the granola bars to the Community. They had already ransacked a couple of care packages, and were slumped and clutching their stomachs from the rancid baked goods. Others who hadn’t gotten packages grabbed several bars and aggressively stuffed them into their mouths. They were scattered all around the room, spent as though they’d all just fought or fucked.

“How are we going to hide that door?” Val asked through a mouth full of chewy bars.

They all looked at Glen, their fearless leader, at least for the day, the man who’d made this all possible.

Glen froze. “Uh,” he began, “that’s a great question. We should talk about it and come to a consensus.” He sat up, poised to facilitate a discussion.

Carl rose. “We’re not going to hide it,” he said. “We’re just going to explain what happened. That when we got here, it was this way. And what can they do about that?” Carl grinned.

“Yeah,” yelled Debra, “fuck them and fuck their door.”

“Exactly, Debra,” Carl said. “Fuck them and fuck their door. And fuck their rules.”

Everyone let out a lethargic yay from their slump.

The discussion was over. Carl had taken the reins to corral them and they’d gone happily. Bea saw Glen’s chest cave.

*

They sorted the packaging and recycled according to number, filled their water bottles, used the bathroom, and then they left the Office. They headed back to their ring of beds. The horses from before were gone.

“I’ve decided those horses are assholes,” Dr. Harold said, clutching his stomach. He had an ex-wife who faithfully sent him packages. But she made odd sweets—things like sunny macarons and palmiers. One time a flourless chocolate cake dusted with snowy sugar. They were beautiful sweets, intricate, professional-looking, like from old magazines Bea used to leaf through for inspiration. They must have taken whole days to make. But they did not keep well at all. He ate them anyway. Bea thought it odd that the woman would go to so much trouble for an ex. And she sometimes wondered if she really was an ex, or if Dr. Harold was playing a role—the lonely divorcé—to win some kind of attention from Debra. If he was, it certainly wasn’t working. Whoever this woman was, she clearly still loved Dr. Harold. So whether he left the marriage or merely left his wife behind, Bea had to wonder why. Here, he was not exactly appreciated. Perhaps he was the kind of man who thrived on heartache. Perhaps he hated her. Dr. Harold walked to the horses’ trough and tipped it over, spilling the little water that was in there, water they’d offered up to the horses and which the horses didn’t seem to need.

Debra clicked her tongue. “Why would you go and waste perfectly good water?”

Dr. Harold looked ashamed. “They were wasting it,” he muttered, regretting his action. He’d probably been trying to impress Debra. She shook her head at him.

They milled around the sputtering fire, fueling it more, picking at their teeth, getting the sticky grains from the granola bars free from between them. Bea spread her blanket on the dirt ground near the horse corral. Agnes knelt beside her and smoothed her hands over the material.

“Scratchy,” she said. But she kept smoothing it. Then she bent her head to it and smelled it, rubbed her cheek on it, then melted down, curling into a ball in a way she never did on a skin.

“Scratchy,” Bea said, rubbing her daughter’s back, her full hand lifting to fingertips when she ran out of room, then beginning again.

From the blanket, Agnes’s muffled voice said, “Read your letters.”

“I will,” Bea said brightly, but she was dreading it. The top one was from her mother, and she could only imagine the guilt she would lay on Bea. And today, after rummaging through closets and eating City food, she was weakened in her resolve against her mother’s wishes.

The last time she’d seen her mother, they had fought. Her mother had stopped over at her request. Bea told her they would leave for the Wilderness State that week. Agnes was at her side, serious, observant, her stuffed unicorn clutched in her hand. Her mother squinted, looked at the apartment, eyed the luggage. Eyed the beginnings of stacks of clothes. Her mother had been skeptical of the idea but had spoken respectfully about it. So it shocked Bea when she unleashed a tirade of anger and incredulity. She hadn’t thought Bea would really go through with it. She hadn’t thought Bea would really leave. How stupid of me, Bea thought, watching her mother’s face contort with wild emotion. Her mother called the plan asinine. She threatened to steal Agnes away and hide her from Bea so she couldn’t leave. She’d even tried to reach out for Agnes, weeping tears of anger and frustration, spitting her words out. “You’re going to kill her,” her mother screamed. Bea’s heart turned to stone. How could her mother think such a thing? Bea was trying to save Agnes. Bea forced her mother into the hallway. In the doorway, her mother inhaled sharply and said bitterly, “You can’t—” And Bea closed the door on her. Through the door’s peephole, Bea watched her mother touch her forehead to the door to sob. Her mother’s back was long through the fish-eye, projecting out into the hallway, shuddering and heaving. Bea left her there and scrambled to finish packing. She did not sleep. She left with Agnes the next day, to Glen’s apartment, which he kept to store his papers, books, things that didn’t fit in Bea’s place. There they finalized everything and left without another word to anyone. It had been such an anomalous confrontation. She and her mother rarely fought. Bea was an only child, her father a stranger, just as Agnes’s father had been. It wasn’t exactly that they’d been so close, but it had been them, together.