Joel had recently taken in several homeless people from Northampton to work and live on the farm, and now they were calling to each other in joyful voices even though it was drudgery to comb through the orchard for fruit. Ivy had seen them on the night they arrived, after they’d been brought to the dining hall. Joel had been the one to bring them their dinners, and then he had sat down with the new people as if he had known them all their lives. He had been so kind to them that Ivy’s heart had swelled up with an abiding devotion. Most people were intimidated by him, but he opened himself to these people who had nothing and welcomed them to the Community. He’d lifted his eyes to her, and when he did everyone else in the room had fallen away.

  Ivy was four months along and showing now. It was a chilly morning, and she was out gathering fruit in a wicker basket. She knew her family had something to do with apples, and they had never been a favorite fruit of hers. She wore a scarf and gloves and a man’s peacoat. When she turned, Joel was standing there watching. She’d heard other women say it would be unwise to betray him or anger him; you had to earn his trust, and if you dared to break it, there was a price to pay. She had seen men and women wearing badges when they had gone against the rules. She was told they had lied or stolen, that they had been vain or disrespectful. Joel was an honest man and expected honesty in return. That’s what Evangeline always said.

  “Wherever I look, I always see you,” Joel told her when they encountered one another in the orchard. “I see true beauty.”

  Ivy felt so unattractive, her face was puffy, her body heavier than it had ever been, that she couldn’t help being flattered. “You must be seeing apple trees, not me.” Ivy laughed, flushed with embarrassment, but also with something more.

  “You’re far more beautiful.” His eyes were so dark, almost black. “Some things are meant to be,” he told her.

  “Like apples.” Ivy gave him a fleeting look. She felt out of her depth here. The basket was heavy in her hands, and she set it down in the grass, aware that he was watching her. For some reason her breath was shallow in her chest.

  “Like us,” Joel responded. “I’d wondered if I could ever love someone again.”

  When Joel came toward her, she didn’t step away. Ivy couldn’t imagine that he’d want someone like her, an insecure girl who hadn’t even finished high school, who didn’t know how to drive a car and was pregnant and didn’t know the first thing about being a mother. She couldn’t imagine that her life could be set right. He kissed her in a way she had never been kissed before. No wonder people did as he said and believed in him. He was stronger than most men; for one thing, he knew what he wanted, even though Ivy wondered how he could be so kind to someone who had arrived on a bus, owning nothing, with nothing to offer. When she told him so, he smiled and shook his head.

  “You have everything I want,” he told her. “You are the apple, you are the tree, you are the orchard.”

  He didn’t wait for what he wanted. Ivy was impressed by that after being with a college boy who expected everything to be handed to him. Two days after they’d met in the orchard, Joel went on his bended knee before her; it was old-fashioned, and another woman might have laughed at how serious he was, but as soon as he did, Ivy was his. Just like that, on an October day. She was a tree in the forest, she was the love of his life, she was so young she was unable to see the future, and on that day, she went forward, hoping for the best. All she knew was that she was the woman who walked through an orchard knowing that she was valued and loved, something she had unfortunately never felt before.

  * * *

  THAT WAS THE WINTER when the snow fell for days and storms became blizzards, when the Lost River froze and turned blue, it was the winter of love when they walked through the drifts to an abandoned cabin at the edge of the woods so they could be alone. Ivy’s belly was huge; she was due that March. All the same, Joel swore that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and she nearly believed him. They were inside a snow globe, after all. They were in a world of their own. “What do you want more than anything?” Joel asked her.

  “A daughter,” she said. “Your daughter,” she added when she saw that he looked crestfallen. She knew that she said things to please him, that in some corner of her soul there was a hidden self she never allowed to be seen. Nothing was perfect, but this was close. Nothing lasted forever, although Joel swore what was between them was for all eternity. The snow was deeper all the time, and the world Ivy had known was so far away. She might have been anywhere, but she was here, in his arms, only six miles from the nearest town, but so far away she might as well have been west of the moon.

  * * *

  ON THE DAY MIA was born, there was a false spring. The lilacs bloomed all at once and the bees emerged from their hives, only to freeze when the cold, blue night fell. Petals turned black. Bees were found on window ledges, having frozen as they tried their best to reach the warm rooms inside. The Tree of Life planted by Johnny Appleseed did not have a single leaf that year. Ivy knew nothing about childbirth, and she’d thought she might die during the worst of her labor. She asked the midwife to put her out of her misery, but they didn’t use drugs of any sort. “I can’t do this,” Ivy had cried, but then Joel had leaned close to whisper in her ear. He didn’t leave her for a minute. “You have to walk through hell to get to heaven,” Joel told her. She listened to him and calmed down. In this way she was bound to him, no matter who she had been before. “Breathe,” he had said and that was what she did. Have faith in yourself, she thought. Have faith in him.

  When they handed Ivy her daughter, the heart of her heart, the true love of her life, all of the pain she’d experienced was immediately forgotten.

  “Our girl,” Joel said, and Ivy was grateful that the child would have a father, even though here at the Community, children were raised in the children’s house, the babies cared for by the women who worked in the nursery. She called the baby Mia, for she’d read that the name meant mine, and no matter the rules, this child belonged to her. Ivy had seven days alone with her daughter before she had to bring her to the nursery. Seven days of love and patience and solitude and sweetness. A wash of love came over her whenever she held her daughter, but the time spun by, and then it was over. Ivy’s heart broke when Evangeline took Mia from her arms. Ivy was still scheduled to feed her, and those were the most precious hours of her day. There was a rocking chair by the window in the nursery with a lovely view, but Ivy never looked outside. She held the world in her arms, and when her visit with Mia was over, Ivy stood outside the children’s house crying.

  Some women saw her and reported her, and she was summoned to Joel’s office.

  “You have to be an example,” he told her. “You can’t break the rules.”

  Children belong to everyone.

  Another woman would have been punished, isolated, and kept from her baby, or, if she continued to break the rules, taken into the fields to be beaten, but Joel had Ivy come sit on his lap and he gently made her promise to accept that her child belonged to the Community. He reminded her that love was everywhere, and if Ivy ever felt like crying again when she left the children’s house, she stopped herself, worried that someone might see her. It wasn’t so hard not to show what you really felt if you practiced, if you closed your eyes and imagined that your daughter was with you even when she was somewhere else, if you let the wind rise all around you, if you only heard the songs of the sparrows in the forest, a place so dark it was easy to get lost even in broad daylight, even if your eyes were open.

  Ivy wrote the letter ten days after Mia was born. Ten days was all it took for her to know she had made a mistake. She went to the office after hours, took a stamped envelope and a sheet of white paper, and sat down at Joel’s desk. She had been assigned to working in the office, where she helped with bill payments. I trust you, Joel had told her when he handed her the key. Evangeline had looked on, displeased, and that was when Ivy realized that Evangeline wanted Joel for herself. Take him, Ivy wished she could say. Take it all.

  She had been thinking about the letter all day, and it was now fully formed in her mind. For the first time she knew exactly what she wanted to say, whether or not she was allowed.

  Dear Helen,

  Should my daughter ever come to you and wish to know what happened, please give her this letter. Maybe it’s not too late for her to understand that she always belonged to me.

  When Ivy finished writing, she addressed the envelope and slipped it into the outbox, along with the bills. In the morning it would go out with the other mail, and no one would notice that it had no return address, and that the envelope was damp, as if someone had been crying, as if they’d put their heart and soul into a letter that might never reach its intended recipient, a child who was now asleep in her crib, watched over by the women who worked in the nursery while her mother went to stand outside to look through the window.

  Once upon a time, Ivy whispered into the cold March air, I loved you more than anything. I loved you more than life itself.

  * * *

  THE WEDDING WAS HELD in the field, on the first day of June. It was a simple affair, pure of spirit and of deed. People said Ivy was lucky, they said she was the chosen one. The entire community formed a circle in the grass during the ceremony and there was a canopy of oak leaves tacked to a newly made wooden arch for the bride and groom to stand beneath.

  Ivy wore a dress made by the sewing circle. They’d crafted their own pattern, then had worked on the dress until their fingers bled. The other women envied her, for Ivy was so beautiful; it was said that she’d grown up spoiled and rich and then she had just waltzed in and snatched up Joel, when so many of them had longed to be his. All the same, a wedding was a joyous occasion, and the long-sleeved white shift the women had stitched would be worn for years afterward, altered to fit every bride to come.

  Evangeline held baby Mia, who at the age of three months was wide-eyed and silent. There were torches set into the ground, and as the sky grew darker, the rustic lamps were lit, globes of light that shone like stars. The heavens were above them, the earth was below, but here on the farm, human virtue and love were all that mattered. Ivy carried a bouquet of pale roses tied with brown string. No photographs were taken, that would have been sheer vanity, but those in attendance remembered what a beautiful bride Ivy had been. On this day, she wore her hair unbraided, falling down her back. Joel was waiting for her at the altar, a broad smile on his face.

  You have come here to leave your old family behind, and start anew, Joel always said at Sunday meetings. That’s what they were doing now. The bride and groom held hands in the field where the grass was so tall some of the children who were quietly standing there couldn’t even be seen. It was as if they had disappeared into the gray light of evening. It was as if magic was possible here.

  Tim Hardy, Evangeline’s husband, wore a black suit, a size too big, and he held one hand on his heart as he spoke. Ivy and Joel repeated the blessing he gave them. Joel’s grasp was strong and tight, and he didn’t take his eyes off her.

  Be true and I will be true to you. Be loyal and you will have my loyalty forever more. A woman should always honor her husband, and he will protect her in return.

  Ivy felt something hot behind her eyes. In a moment she was blinking back tears, but who wouldn’t be emotional on her wedding day? Despite the joy of the occasion, she felt like tramping through the woods to hide behind the fallen trees covered with pale green lichen. She wondered if Helen had read the letter, and if someone would come and save her from her own impetuous decisions, but it was a silly thought, they didn’t even know where she was, so she remained there beside Joel. The idea of moving on from here seemed too far-fetched to achieve. She had no education, no money, no friends on the outside, no family, no profession, no assistance, no faith, no suitcase, no bus ticket, no other home, no one to help with her baby.

  Ivy realized the white dress was stained green at the hem from standing in the grass. It would have to be taken to the laundry and bleached. She thought it was likely that nothing lasted. It occurred to her that everything that seemed good had indeed been too good to be true. Tonight, there would be fireflies in the meadow and before long she would be in Joel’s bed. She would belong to someone who vowed he would never betray her. Wasn’t that enough?

  Joel kissed her beneath the canopy of leaves. Wedding rings were a vanity. Honeymoons were unheard of. This was more, this was everything, a commitment for all eternity. There was silence in the field as they pledged themselves to one another. The only sound was made by little Mia, who let out a cry. But Evangeline covered the baby’s mouth with her hand to quiet her and when she did three birds flew across the pale sky. One for the present, one for the future, one for the past.

  Ivy thought of the first day her father had taken her to the Athenaeum, only a few blocks from their house, one of the oldest private libraries in the country, whose members had included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, John Quincy Adams, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He told her she could go there any time she wanted, and she’d spent countless rainy afternoons there in an old armchair, engrossed in one of the novels she loved. She had started with fairy tales and then kept on going until she reached Wuthering Heights. Reading is never wasted time, Ivy’s father had told her. She wished he were standing beside her now, but he would have ruined everything. Wake up, he would have said. What are you doing here? What sort of world is a world without books? I’m looking for safety, she would have told him. I’m looking for stars in the night sky, hope where there is none. She wished he hadn’t slapped her when she told him the truth. She had always been a daddy’s girl, and he’d put up with a lot of bad behavior, but she didn’t have a father anymore. She was Joel’s girl now.

  Standing there, Ivy told herself it made sense that reading wasn’t allowed. There was so much work to be done at the Community there was little time for anything else. She stopped her foolish thoughts that went against the rules. Life was different here. It had been ever since she’d gotten off the bus with Kayla and walked up to the farm, although Kayla had been unhappy all winter. One day they’d walked into town with a group of other young women to see the Tree of Life bloom, an apple tree that was thick with blossoms as snowflakes whirled through the sky. Afterward, Kayla had come up to Ivy in the fields and quietly said, “Do you think you’re the only one? You don’t even know him.”

  Kayla had walked away with a triumphant grin on her face, for she’d intended to hurt Ivy and make her wonder, and she’d been successful.

  They stayed away from one another after that. Kayla had been in trouble, and the trouble grew worse. It was said she’d stolen food from the kitchen, that she disobeyed and sat idly by rather than work. Joel announced that she had been breaking the rules of morality. Kayla had an M branded onto her arm as part of her punishment, and she’d been placed in isolation, locked in the barn. When she was let out, she had a haunted look, especially when Ivy was around. “This place isn’t any different than anywhere else,” Kayla whispered when they worked together in the field. She didn’t sound brash anymore; as a matter of fact, she appeared to be shattered. “He gets to do as he pleases, and I’m left with the burden.”

  “What burden?” Ivy said. She had felt a chill along the back of her neck.

  “What do you think?” Kayla patted her stomach. “I can’t have it, and I’m not allowed to get rid of it, so where does that leave me?”

  There was a clinic outside Blackwell, where pregnancies could be terminated, but Joel believed such procedures to be crimes against nature; he believed that a woman’s body belonged not to her but to the Community. One of the men from the farm was stationed outside the clinic in a pickup truck, but even if any of the Community women had dared to enter, they had no medical insurance and no personal savings, and they knew what would happen to them if they were caught.

  Kayla had disappeared one night when the snow was coming down hard. She hadn’t been found even though a group of men had gone off searching for her. The weather was too bad, and people were told she likely took the bus back to Boston. But when the ice melted in February, a body was discovered in the woods. It had never been identified, even after an autopsy. In town, people said there had been multiple organ failures when a woman tried to terminate a pregnancy by ingesting poisonous herbs, including henbane and rue.

  Joel had told the Sunday gathering that Kayla didn’t have the strength it took to build a new society. A woman who is weak is not a woman worth helping, he told them. Not like you, not like your daughters. You are all beautiful, inside and out. You are queens who have no need of a crown. He went up to each of the women and bowed down before her, and when he came to Ivy there were tears in his eyes. “You know you’re the only one,” he told her, as if he had read her mind, and was aware that she had doubts, even though she knew she should not.

  She never told anyone that on the night Kayla disappeared, there had been a faint knocking at the door of the house Ivy shared with Joel.

  “Joel?” Kayla had called. Her tone, which was usually indignant, was soft and earnest now. She stood there as the snow fell down. “If you don’t let me do it, I’ll do it myself.” Joel was at a meeting with the men on the construction team and so Ivy was alone. She had pressed herself against the wall and remained quiet, and eventually Kayla had stopping knocking.

  For all she knew Kayla was a liar. She lied about being too sick to show up for work, and about needing to have her own room because she was a light sleeper. Still, Ivy reproached herself for not opening the door to her friend. She told herself she didn’t do it because the Community had taken such good care of Ivy when she arrived, and Joel hadn’t left her side during her three-day labor when she brought Mia into the world. But when she searched her soul, she knew that the real reason was that she was afraid to hear what Kayla had to say.