Mom insisted we keep up our regular order for most of our stock, but I told her I wanted to replenish our supply of red roses because we sold more of them than anything else. I stole away to the back garden and lined up pots, filled them with soil, and set fully bloomed roses in the dirt. Mom offered to keep me company, but I didn’t want her or Mo anywhere nearby if something went wrong.

Stirring the soil with my fingers, the familiar prickling brought my skin to gooseflesh. I closed my eyes and concentrated as hard as I could on the warm feeling in my fingers.

Just grow. Only these flowers. Nothing else.

The stem of a rosebush pushed its way up through the dirt. My heart raced and my head pounded as I moved to each of the other pots. The back garden transformed into an oasis of crimson petals and dark green leaves and stalks. There must’ve been two hundred flowers ready for harvesting, so perfectly formed they looked fake. I knew they’d stay that way for weeks, maybe longer. I hoped Jake wouldn’t question the peculiar longevity of the roses.

My vision blurred. I was winded, like I’d run a mile, and so dizzy I couldn’t keep my balance when I stood up. I leaned against the back wall of the shop and slid to the ground, cradled my head in my hands, my palms damp with sweat. I just wanted this to work without having to be afraid of what might happen.

The door to the shop creaked open. Mo poked her head out, took one look at me, and pulled me inside. I slumped into a chair behind the counter and took off my glasses. Mo filled a paper cup with water and handed it to me. I sipped it slowly, worried it might come back up if I drank too fast.

“We’re done with that,” she said. “No more. We’ll be fine.”

“No, I can help,” I said. I stood up and a sweeping rush of nausea knocked me right back down. “I need a minute to get it together.”

Mo dampened a paper towel under the faucet and laid it across my forehead. She handed me my glasses and slipped her hand under my chin. “No. Let it be. We’ll order what we need. Don’t waste another minute thinking about it, you hear me?”

Mo glanced down the hall, then back to me. There was something in her eyes that scared me. It was uncertainty, fear. Of what? It could have been fifty different things, but I was afraid in that moment it might be me. She took me by the arm and led me out of the shop.

The next morning, we loaded the car up. I gave Jake my house key and asked him to water my plants before we took off.

Navigation said we’d get to Rhinebeck in two hours and twenty-three minutes. Mom pointed out that was the exact length of the Hamilton soundtrack, and I knew what we’d be listening to on our trip. Mo was Hamilton, Mom was Eliza, and I was Angelica, Peggy, and Mariah Reynolds—but they asked me to chill during “Say No to This” because apparently, my ho impression was too spot-on. It was only a bunch of gyrating and overdramatic hand gestures, but they weren’t having it.

We kept the windows down and the volume up the whole way. When we pulled into the town of Rhinebeck, the closing chords of the final song played out. Mom sobbed through Eliza’s farewell as Mo dramatically held her hand like she was the actual sad ghost of Alexander Hamilton, with me dying of embarrassment in the back seat.

“What key are y’all singin’ in?” I asked. “I don’t think any of those notes exist in real life.”

“It’s in B-quiet,” Mo said, turning to Mom. “We’re almost there. You okay?”

Mom nodded, wiping her face on her shirt.

Google said Rhinebeck had a population of seventy-seven hundred people. I told myself that was enough to keep us from feeling like we were moving to the middle of nowhere. But as we drove through the shop-lined streets of a literal village, I realized that their seven thousand, compared to our over two million in Brooklyn, was like moving to the moon. There wasn’t any traffic. People strolled along the sidewalks like they didn’t have anywhere to be. There were bike lanes and the cars actually yielded to the cyclists.

And there were trees. So many trees lining the streets. Everywhere I looked were red maple and white ash in full bloom. Their beauty held my attention for only a minute before I understood how difficult this was going to make things for me.

“I don’t know about this,” I said.

Mom laughed. “Baby, this is heaven.”

“Is it?” I asked. I was thinking of someplace else.

We drove the twenty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit through the town and several people waved to us. I stuck my head between the front seats. “Should I wave back?”

Mo shrugged. “I guess?”

I waved to an old man, who smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. I leaned back in my seat.

“Nah. See? It’s like Get Out,” I said. “I don’t want a white woman living in my body, Mom.”

“Girl, stop,” said Mo, as she and Mom chuckled. “I know we’re all used to being real guarded, but it looks like that’s not how they do things up here.”

“I already hate it,” I said.

Mom looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Wanna turn around?” She was dead serious, and she would have done it if I’d asked her to.

I leaned against the door and thought of Gabby, of Marlon. “No, ma’am.”

We took a series of turns that put us on a narrow, two-lane road leading away from town. After a few minutes, there were no other cars in sight, and the blue triangle on our GPS started to twirl in a circle.

“Great,” Mom said. She reached under her seat and pulled out an actual map. She handed it to Mo.

“Yeah, okay,” Mo said. “Let me just—” She flipped the map around a bunch of times, then smoothed it out on her lap. “If that way is north—” She literally pointed up and I clapped my hand over mouth to keep from hollering. “Then we have to keep going this way and—what direction does the sun set in again? Never mind. These numbers on the side, that’s latitude, right?”

Mom let the air hiss out between her teeth. “I don’t need to know the latitude.”

“No?” Mo asked. “Okay, so I think we’re, like, four kilometers away.”

“Kilometers?” I sat back. “We’re about to be so lost.”

“I don’t wanna get turned around out here, Angie,” Mom said.

“I haven’t read a map since I was in school,” Mo said. “And after that we had MapQuest so—”