Chapter 2: Arrival at the Farmhouse
The van shuddered as the wheels left the smooth asphalt of the interstate, and the gravel began to rattle up through the floorboards like a handful of thrown stones. I gripped the edge of the bench seat, my knuckles white, watching through the windshield as the road narrowed between tall, untended hedgerows that leaned in from both sides like they were trying to swallow the path whole.
Four hours. Four hours of highway and state routes and small towns with names I'd already forgotten the moment we passed their signs. Four hours of sitting in the back of an unmarked van with a driver who hadn't said a single word beyond "buckle up" when we left the facility. Four hours of feeling the fabric of Justin's grey hoodie rub against skin that wasn't his.
The gravel lane curved once, twice, and then the farmhouse came into view, and something in my chest went very, very still.
It was a two story white clapboard structure with a metal roof that gleamed dully in the late afternoon light, solar panels angled across the south facing slope like dark blue mirrors. A wraparound porch sagged just slightly at one corner, the kind of settle that came from decades of Vermont winters. A red barn sat off to the left, its paint faded to the color of dried blood, and beyond it the hills rolled away in soft green waves toward a distant ridgeline thick with maples.
The van crunched to a stop in the gravel turnaround. The driver, a man in his fifties with a crew cut and no expression to speak of, killed the engine and got out without a word. He walked around to the back and opened the sliding door.
I didn't move.
The hollow certainty had settled into my stomach somewhere around mile sixty, and it had only grown heavier with every passing hour. This was it. This was the whole of it. A farmhouse at the end of a gravel road in rural Vermont, the only place left in the world that would ever take me in. Not because anyone here knew me. Not because anyone here wanted me. But because the government had paid for it and the government had decided.
"You coming?" the driver said. Not unkind. Just flat, like he was asking whether I wanted a receipt.
I swung my legs out of the van, and my too-big sneakers hit the gravel with a crunch. Justin's blue sweatpants pooled around my ankles, the cuffs wet from where I'd stepped in something at a rest stop three hours back. The grey hoodie hung off my shoulders like a tent, the sleeves swallowed my hands entirely, and every time I took a step, the rough cotton of the hoodie rubbed against the heavy, unfamiliar weight of my chest.
I'd spent the whole ride trying not to think about it. Trying not to feel it. But walking was a different kind of betrayal. Each step sent a jolt through my body, and I could feel them moving, bouncing against the fabric of the hoodie with an insistency that made my face burn. I crossed my arms over my chest, tucking my hands into the sleeves, and the motion only drew more attention to the shape of things.
The driver pulled a single duffel bag from the van and set it on the ground at my feet. "House is stocked. Groceries in the fridge. There's a folder on the kitchen table with everything you need to know. Cell phone's in there, already set up, only contacts you'll need."
I stared at the duffel. It was black, anonymous, the kind of bag you'd buy at any department store in America. I had no idea what was in it. Clothes, probably. Maybe a toothbrush. Maybe nothing that belonged to me, because nothing belonged to me anymore.
"Marshal Morgan will check in every few weeks," the driver continued. "There's a landline in the kitchen. It only rings between nine and five. If it rings outside those hours, you answer it, because that means something's wrong."
I looked up at him. "What about you?"
"Me?" He shook his head. "I'm gone the moment you're inside."
"Just like that."
"Just like that." He hesitated for half a second, and something almost human flickered across his face. "It's a good town. Quiet. Nobody's going to bother you out here."
I wanted to laugh at that. I wanted to tell him that the only person bothering me was me, that I was trapped in a body that wasn't mine, wearing clothes that were three sizes too big and a face I'd never seen before in my life. But the words stuck in my throat, and I just nodded instead.
He got back in the van. The engine turned over. The gravel spat from the wheels as he pulled away, and then he was gone, and I was standing in the middle of a gravel turnaround with a duffel bag at my feet and a farmhouse watching me from the end of its porch like it had been waiting for someone who never came.
The quiet was enormous.
I'd lived my whole life in cities. Apartment buildings where you could hear your neighbors through the walls, traffic that never stopped, light pollution that turned the sky orange. Here, the only sound was the wind moving through the field grass and a bird I couldn't name singing somewhere far off. The air smelled like cut hay and something green and living, and it was so foreign that it made my chest ache.
I picked up the duffel bag. It was heavier than I expected, and I fumbled it once before getting a proper grip. Then I started walking toward the farmhouse, my overlarge sneakers scuffing against the gravel, Justin's sweatpants dragging through the dust.
The porch steps creaked under my weight. The front door was unlocked, and it swung open onto a kitchen with white cabinets and a scarred wooden table. A folder sat in the center of it, neat and waiting. Through a doorway, I could see a living room with an overstuffed sofa and a wood stove. Everything smelled like paint and new lumber, fresh and clean and completely without history.
I set the duffel down on the floor. I walked to the kitchen table. I looked at the folder with my name on it. Sabrina Parker, it said in clean black type, and I felt something twist inside me at the sight of it.
Sabrina Parker. A stranger's name for a stranger's face.
I picked up the folder and held it in my hands for a long moment, feeling the weight of it, feeling the weight of everything it contained. Then I put it back down on the table without opening it.
Not yet.
I walked to the window above the sink and looked out at the hills rolling away toward the ridgeline. The sun was beginning to sink behind the trees, and the sky was turning the color of bruised peaches. Somewhere out there, on the other side of those hills, the life I'd known was still going on without me. The apartment I'd lived in. The job I'd hated. The name on my birth certificate.
None of it existed anymore. All of it was gone, erased, filed away under a classification code I'd never see.
And I was standing in a farmhouse in Vermont, wearing a dead man's clothes, waiting for the silence to tell me who I was supposed to be now.
I stood at the window a while longer, watching the light fade from the sky, before I finally turned away from the sink and took a breath.
The folder sat on the table like a patient animal, but I left it there. There would be time for that. Time for all of it. Right now I needed to move, to walk through the rooms, to understand the shape of the space I was supposed to live in. The alternative was standing in this kitchen until dark, not knowing where the light switches were or whether the wood stove in the living room had a damper that needed opening or any of the thousand small practicalities that made a house a home.
I started with the living room.
It was smaller than it had looked from the doorway, but it was comfortable in a way that made my chest ache. The overstuffed sofa was a deep green, worn soft at the arms, with a knitted throw blanket draped across the back. A rocking chair sat near the wood stove, and beside it a small table with a reading lamp. The stove itself was cast iron, heavy and black, and there was a neat stack of firewood in a metal rack against the wall. I ran my hand along the top of the sofa as I passed, feeling the nubby texture of the upholstery, and I thought about how someone had chosen this fabric, had measured this room, had made a hundred decisions that would now shape my life.
There was a bookshelf against one wall, two shelves of paperbacks and a few hardcovers. I scanned the spines without really reading them. A copy of Walden. Some whodunits. A dog-eared field guide to birds of the Northeast. All of it arranged to look inhabited, to look like someone with a history might live here.
I moved on.
The dining room was a long, narrow space off the kitchen with a wooden table and four chairs, the kind of set you'd find at an antique shop, worn at the edges and stained with tiny rings from decades of coffee cups. A china cabinet stood against the far wall, its glass doors revealing mismatched dishes and a few ceramic pieces that looked handmade. I wondered who had chosen these things. I wondered if anyone had, or if they'd all been purchased in bulk from a catalog somewhere, a dozen identical farmhouses stocked with the same furniture so that no witness would ever leave a trace.
The study was the smallest room on the first floor, tucked behind the dining room. A desk sat beneath a window that faced the barn, and a worn leather chair that creaked when I touched it. The desk drawers were empty, cleaned out and waiting. A bulletin board hung on the wall with a blank cork surface, a few pushpins still scattered at the bottom edge. I closed the drawers and left them empty. I didn't have anything to put in them.
The half bath was off the hallway, a tiny room with a pedestal sink and a toilet and a small window that looked out at the gravel drive. The mirror over the sink was round and simple, and I could see the edge of my reflection in it, a flash of honey-blonde hair and a rounded shoulder before I turned away. I wasn't ready for that yet.
The kitchen I'd already seen, but I went through it again with more attention this time. The fridge was stocked with milk and eggs and sandwich fixings. The pantry had pasta and canned tomatoes and a bag of coffee beans that smelled dark and rich when I opened the bag. The cabinets held plates and bowls and a set of mismatched silverware. Everything you'd need to live. Everything arranged to look like a life.
I went back to the hallway and found the stairs.
They creaked under my weight, and I gripped the railing as I climbed, my oversized sneakers scuffing against the wooden treads. The hallway at the top had three doors. One was a guest bedroom with a twin bed and sturdy pine furniture, neatly made with a blue quilt and no dust anywhere on the windowsills. Another guest bedroom was bigger, with a double bed and a pale yellow comforter and a small rocking chair in the corner. Both rooms had an emptiness to them, that particular quality of spaces that have never held a sleeping body.
The third door was at the end of the hall.
I hesitated at the threshold. The door was slightly ajar, and I could see a foot of the room through the gap. I pushed it open and stepped inside.
The master bedroom was larger than the others, and it faced the hills. Late afternoon light slanted through the window, warm and golden, and the room was painted a soft, muted blue. A queen bed with a simple white duvet took up most of the space, and there were two bedside tables with lamps. A chest of drawers stood against one wall, and a whitewashed armoire with a full length mirror hung on the inside of its door stood on the other. The mirror was closed, which I was grateful for, and I kept it closed.
There was a door on the far wall, and I knew it had to be the bathroom before I even reached for it.
The bathroom was larger than I expected. A deep, claw foot tub sat beneath a window that looked out at the ridge, and a glass enclosed shower stood against the opposite wall, modern and clean and clearly new. The vanity was white with a vessel sink, and there was a stack of soft towels on a shelf, pale blue and neatly folded. Soap and shampoo and all the little things you'd need. Everything was arranged to look like it had always been there.
I stood in the middle of the bathroom and felt the silence press in around me.
This was the room where I would undress. Where I would wash this body, feel this unfamiliar skin under my hands, see every inch of the stranger I had become in the full length mirror that I'd closed only moments ago. This was the room where the truth would be unavoidable, where there would be no oversized hoodie to hide in, no baggy sweatpants to disappear into. Just me, and whatever I was now, and the reflection I still hadn't had the courage to face.
I looked at the bathtub. I looked at the shower. I looked at the towels, folded so neatly, waiting for a hand to use them.
My hand. This hand. The one that looked smaller than Justin's had, the fingers slimmer, the nails trimmed and unfamiliar. I held it up and looked at it in the fading light.
Somewhere outside, a bird sang a single, clear note. Then quiet again.
I backed out of the bathroom, closed the door softly behind me, and sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress gave gently under my weight. The duvet was cool and smooth against my palm. I sat there a long time, not doing anything, not looking at anything, just being a body in a room in a house in a small town in Vermont, trying to find a way through all the rooms I still hadn't explored, all the rooms that mattered more than the ones with furniture.
The mirror in the armoire stayed closed.
I wasn't ready for it. Not yet.
The silence in the room had a weight to it, pressing down on my shoulders like something physical. I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, my hands folded in my lap, staring at the closed door of the armoire. The mirror waited behind it. I could feel it there, patient and knowing, the way you can feel a presence in a room even when you can't see it.
I had been avoiding this. Every moment since I woke up in that facility, since I first felt the wrongness of this body, I had been hiding inside Justin's clothes like they could somehow anchor me to who I used to be. The grey hoodie. The blue sweatpants. The boxers underneath that I'd been wearing since the morning before the procedure, when I was still a man with a man's name and a man's life.
But the clothes were just fabric. They didn't change what was underneath them. And sitting here, in this quiet farmhouse at the end of the world, there was no one left to hide from. No doctors. No marshals. No driver waiting outside. Just me, and the truth I had been running from all day.
I looked down at my hands. Small hands. Slim fingers. A silver ring on my right index finger that I didn't remember putting on, that I had noticed in the facility and been too overwhelmed to question. I turned it around my finger, feeling the unfamiliar weight of it.
Then I reached for the waistband of the sweatpants.
The fabric was soft and worn, Justin's favorite pair. I'd had them for years, through the apartment and the job and the long nights spent staring at spreadsheets, through every ordinary day of a life that felt, in retrospect, like a prison I hadn't known I was in. I pushed them down over my hips, and they slid easily, too wide, too loose, falling without protest to the floor.
My legs were bare beneath them. Shaved. Smooth in a way that Justin's legs had never been, in a way that I had never felt before, and the sight of them made my stomach lurch. The legs were shorter than his, more slender, with a soft curve to the calves and knees that I didn't recognize. My feet still wore Justin's oversized sneakers, absurd against these new, delicate ankles, and I bent to pull them off, then the socks, leaving the sweatpants pooling around my feet.
I stood up. The boxers were next.
I hooked my thumbs under the waistband and pushed them down. They were Justin's boxers, grey with a faded blue stripe, and they fell just as easily as the pants had. I stepped out of them and stood in the middle of the room in nothing but the oversized grey hoodie, my feet bare against the wooden floor.
The hoodie hung to mid-thigh, tenting out from my shoulders. But it didn't hide everything. The fabric draped differently on this body. It was too large, yes, but the weight of my chest beneath it pulled the cotton forward, and I could see the outline of my breasts pushing against the material, two distinct swellings that rose and fell with each breath. The hem grazed the tops of my thighs, and below it my legs went bare, smooth and pale and utterly alien.
I stood very still, watching my chest move.
The hoodie was rough against my skin. Every time I moved, the fabric shifted over the sensitive flesh of my breasts, and the sensation was so foreign, so constant, that I had been trying to ignore it for hours. But now there was nothing to distract me. No van. No driver. No road unrolling ahead of me. Just the feel of cotton against nipples that had never been touched by anything, that had existed for less than a day, catching and rubbing with every small movement.
I lifted my hands. The sleeves were so long that my fingers barely emerged, and I had to push the fabric back just to get my palms against the hem of the hoodie. I gathered the cotton in my fists, the way you'd grab a shirt before pulling it over your head, and I held it there for a long moment, breathing.
The air in the room was cool. I could feel it moving across the bare skin of my legs, raising goosebumps along my thighs. The window faced west, and the last of the evening light came through it, casting long shadows across the floor.
I closed my eyes.
The fabric caught on my chest as I pulled. Not painfully, but insistently, the cotton dragging over the curve of my breasts, catching at their full weight for one brief, breathless moment before it came free and slid over my head.
And then it was off.
The hoodie hit the floor with a soft thump. I stood in the middle of the room, naked, the evening light falling across my skin.
I opened my eyes and looked down.
The body that greeted me was small and soft in ways I had no words for. My breasts were heavy and full, round as ripe fruit, with pale nipples that had tightened in the cool air. They sat high on my chest, the weight of them pulling gently at my shoulders, and I could see the faint blue tracery of veins beneath the translucent skin. My waist curved in from my ribs, narrow and smooth, and my hips flared out beneath it, wide and curving. Between my legs was the unfamiliar absence, the place where everything I'd once known was gone, replaced by a soft mound of pale hair.
I stood there for a long time, not moving, not breathing, just staring at the body I had been given.
It was beautiful. That was the worst part. The body was objectively, undeniably beautiful. Sensual and curved and feminine in a way that made my mouth go dry. And it was mine now. Permanently. Irrevocably. There was no version of events in which this body would ever become anything else.
I lifted one hand and touched my collarbone, feeling the delicate bones beneath the skin. My fingers trailed downward, over the soft swell of one breast, and I flinched at the sensation, a bolt of sensitivity that shot through me and made my breath catch. The skin was impossibly soft. Everything about this body was soft.
I walked to the armoire and opened the door.
The mirror swung into view, and I saw myself for the first time.
The woman in the glass was a stranger. Short, with honey-blonde hair that fell in thick waves to her shoulders, and wide blue eyes that seemed to swallow the light. Her face was soft, rounded, with a subtle sweetness that had never existed in Justin's sharp features. Her breasts sat high on her chest, full and heavy, and her waist curved into hips that flared wide.
I looked at her. She looked back at me with a stranger's eyes.
And I had no idea who she was.
I turned away from the mirror, my breath ragged. The stranger in the glass had looked at me with those wide blue eyes, and I had seen nothing of myself in them. No recognition. No anchor. Just a beautiful woman I had never met, wearing my skin.
I closed the armoire door and leaned against it, pressing my palms flat against the cool wood. The silence of the house pressed in around me, and I could hear my own heartbeat, faster than it should have been, thudding against my ribs.
I needed clothes. Something to cover this body, to stop the constant awareness of it, the way the air moved across my bare skin and made me feel exposed in a way I had never been before. The duffel bag downstairs had clothes, probably, but they were anonymous, government-issue. The drawers in this room, though, those belonged to Sabrina Parker. They would be filled with her things, her choices, her life.
I crossed the room to the chest of drawers and pulled open the top one.
It was filled with tank tops. Soft cotton and ribbed knits in muted colors, pale pink and sage green and off-white, folded in neat stacks. I pulled out a soft grey one and held it up. It was small, the kind of thing that would have been a joke on Justin's frame, but for this body it would fit. It would probably fit perfectly, maybe even snug, and the thought made my stomach do something uncomfortable.
I set it aside and opened the next drawer. Shorts. Cotton and linen and a few pairs of denim cutoffs, all of them short, hemmed high on the thigh. I pulled out a pair of soft heather grey ones and held them up against my waist. They'd be tight across my hips. I could already tell.
Underwear. I needed underwear. I looked at the bottom drawer, the deepest one, and I knew before I opened it that it would be there. I crouched down and pulled the drawer open.
My jaw dropped.
Thongs. The drawer was full of them. Dozens of them, in every color and fabric imaginable, lace and cotton and satin, folded in neat little rows. Some were plain and practical. Others were barely more than a triangle of fabric and a string, the kind of thing that belonged in a lingerie catalog, not in a dresser drawer in rural Vermont.
I stared at them, my mind going blank.
This was Sabrina Parker's underwear. This was what she wore. This was what I was supposed to wear now. And I had never in my life, not once, ever imagined myself looking at a drawer full of thongs and trying to figure out how to put one on.
I reached in and picked up the most innocuous one I could find. Plain cotton, olive green, nothing fancy. Just a small triangle of fabric with narrow straps. I turned it over in my hands, feeling the softness of the cotton, the thinness of the straps. There was a time, a lifetime ago, when I had known exactly what underwear was supposed to look like. Boxers, briefs, something with room to breathe. This was not that.
I swallowed hard and stood up. The tank top was still draped over the edge of the dresser. The shorts were waiting. And the thong was in my hand, soft and small and terrifying.
I put the tank top on first. It was soft, the fabric cool against my skin, and it slipped over my shoulders easily. It hung loose at my waist, the way it was probably designed to, but it was not loose across my chest. The cotton stretched tight over the heavy swell of my breasts, clinging to them, outlining every curve. The neckline was low, and I could see the pale upper slopes of my chest rising above the fabric, the soft shadow of cleavage deepening with each breath. It was cropped, too, ending just above my navel, and the bare strip of my stomach made me feel oddly exposed.
I looked down at myself and felt the strangeness of it all over again. The tank top was comfortable. More comfortable than Justin's hoodie had been, actually, softer against the sensitive skin of my chest. But it looked so different on this body. So deliberate. So feminine.
The thong was next.
I held it up and examined it, trying to figure out the mechanics. It was just a triangle with straps, really. The triangle went in front. The straps went around... somewhere. I stepped into it, pulling it up over my hips, and immediately knew I had done something wrong when the narrow band of fabric settled strangely.
No. Wait. That was right.
I winced as the thin strip of cotton settled between my buttocks, an alien sensation that I had never in my life experienced. The waistband sat low on my hips, the triangle covering the place down there, and the back was just a string. A literal string, wedged where nothing had ever been wedged before.
I stood very still, trying to adjust to the feeling. It was like my body had suddenly remembered it had a backside and decided to announce it. Every step I took would be accompanied by this constant, faint awareness of fabric where fabric had no business being.
I pulled the shorts on. They were tight, high at the waist, and they hugged my hips and rear like a second skin. I could feel the denim-cotton blend pressing against the curve of my buttocks, the way it clung to every swell. The thong disappeared beneath them, but I could still feel it, thin and insistent, a constant reminder of what I was wearing.
I looked down at myself. The tank top was cropped and soft, the shorts were tight and short, and the body beneath them was curved and feminine and utterly unfamiliar. I looked like a girl. A young woman. I looked like Sabrina Parker.
I turned to the mirror, still open from before, and forced myself to look.
The reflection showed a small woman with honey-blonde hair and wide blue eyes, wearing a soft grey tank top that hugged her generous chest and heather grey shorts that cupped her shapely hips. She looked comfortable. She looked natural. She looked like she belonged in this farmhouse, in this small town, in this life.
I stared at her, and I could not make myself believe that she was me.
The thong shifted as I moved, and I winced again. I wasn't sure I would ever get used to that feeling. But the alternative was wearing nothing beneath these shorts, and that was somehow worse.
I reached for the mirror to close it, then stopped. My hand hovered in the air, and I looked at the woman in the glass. She was looking back at me, patient and calm, as if she had all the time in the world to wait for me to accept her.
But I wasn't ready.
I closed the armoire and walked out of the master bedroom, heading back down the stairs toward the kitchen. The folder was still on the table, waiting for me. And in the gathering darkness, with the thong a constant whisper against my skin, I finally sat down and opened it.
The folder was heavier than paper should be. I opened it on the scarred wooden table, the lamplight pooling across the documents inside, and for a moment I just looked at the top page without reading it. A birth certificate. State of New York. I picked it up.
Sabrina Marie Parker, born March 14th, at Buffalo General Hospital. Mother: Patricia Anne Parker, occupation listed as elementary school teacher. Father: David Edward Parker, occupation listed as mechanic. Address: a street in Lackawanna I'd never heard of, a suburb south of Buffalo I'd passed through once on a business trip, years ago, and never thought about again.
I stared at the names. Patricia. David. My mother was a schoolteacher, my father a mechanic. That's what Vance-Ross had said, and here it was, typed out in black ink on official government paper, as if it had always been true. As if there had always been a Sabrina Marie Parker, born to those parents, in that hospital, in that city.
I turned the page.
A death certificate. Two of them, actually, clipped together. Patricia Anne Parker, cause of death smoke inhalation. David Edward Parker, cause of death smoke inhalation. Same date, two years ago. Same address in Lackawanna. A house fire, the coroner's report noted, caused by faulty wiring in the basement, discovered in the early morning hours. Bodies recovered from the second floor bedroom. No surviving children listed on the form, because this was the official record, and it only knew about the daughter who had moved out at eighteen and never come back.
I set the death certificates down. My hand was shaking, just slightly, and I pressed it flat against the table to still it.
The next page was a driver's license. New York state, issued three years ago. Sabrina Marie Parker, 5'2", 115 pounds, blue eyes. The photo showed a young woman with honey-blonde hair and a careful smile, her face tilted just so, the kind of photo you take at the DMV when you're trying to look normal. The woman in the photo was me. The same bright blue eyes I'd seen in the mirror upstairs, the same soft round face, the same honey-blonde waves. But the photo had been taken years ago, before I existed, and I had no memory of sitting for it.
I couldn't stop looking at it.
Underneath the license were bank statements. A checking account at a regional credit union, opened four years ago, with a balance that suggested a modest inheritance and careful spending. A savings account with a bit more. Credit cards, a Visa and a store card for a department store I'd never heard of. All in Sabrina Parker's name, all with a history that had been carefully constructed.
I kept going.
A rental agreement from Buffalo, an apartment on the west side, six years of occupancy. A lease for a different apartment before that, student housing near a community college I'd apparently attended for two years, studying accounting, of all things. I almost laughed at that. Accounting. Even in a fabricated life, I'd chosen the same field. Maybe that was Vance-Ross's idea of a joke.
A letter from a grief counselor, dated six months after the house fire. It referenced our sessions, her condolences for my loss, the progress I'd made. I read it twice, looking for the person who had written it, looking for the woman who had sat in that office and talked about losing her parents. There was no memory attached to the words. No grief. Just type on a page, carefully composed to make me feel like I had a past.
The last document in the folder was a handwritten letter. Lined paper, folded in thirds, the kind of thing you'd write to a friend. The handwriting was neat and rounded, a young woman's hand. I unfolded it and began to read.
Dear Sabrina,
I know you've been thinking about it for months, ever since the anniversary. You told me you couldn't stay in Buffalo anymore, that every street reminded you of them, and I get it. I really do. Losing your parents isn't something you just get over. It stays with you. But you're right that staying in the same place, walking the same sidewalks, seeing the same faces, it doesn't let you breathe.
You asked me what I thought about Vermont. I think it's the right call. You need quiet, you need space, you need somewhere the city can't reach you. I know you're scared to be alone. But being alone in a place you chose is different from being alone in a place that chose you. And you've always been stronger than you give yourself credit for.
I'll come visit in the spring. I promise. Just promise me you'll call when you get there, so I know you made it safe.
Love,
Rachel
I read the letter three times before I set it down.
Rachel. A friend I'd never met, who had never existed, who had apparently written me a letter of encouragement before I moved to Vermont. A letter that had been composed by some government analyst in a lab somewhere, designed to look like it had been written by a real person with a real hand and real feelings for a real woman who had really lost her parents in a real fire.
But there was no Rachel. There was no fire. There was no apartment in Buffalo or community college or grief counselor or anniversary that I couldn't bear to relive.
There was only this body, these hands, this face I'd never seen before this morning.
And a story, carefully written, waiting for me to live it.
I sat back in the chair. The folder lay open on the table, all its documents spread out like evidence in a case I hadn't been told I was involved in. The evidence said I was Sabrina Parker. It said I was twenty-one years old, born in Buffalo, orphaned two years ago, moving to Vermont for a fresh start. It said I had a friend named Rachel who would come visit in the spring. It said I had chosen this farmhouse, this town, this quiet life.
None of it was true. But all of it was mine now.
I picked up the handwritten letter again and looked at the signature. Rachel. I didn't know what Rachel looked like. I didn't know what she and Sabrina had been through together. But if anyone ever asked, I would have to know. I would have to say, yes, I have a friend back in Buffalo, her name's Rachel, she's always been there for me. I would have to tell the story so many times that it stopped being a story and started being the truth.
The lamp on the table flickered once, then held steady.
I shuffled the papers back into the folder, neat and orderly, the way I'd always kept my files at the accounting firm. The motion was familiar, even in these unfamiliar hands. I closed the folder and set it aside, then I sat at the table in the quiet kitchen, looking at the window where the last light had faded from the sky.
Outside, the hills were dark now. The farmhouse had settled into its foundations, creaking softly, and I could hear the wind moving through the field grass, a sound I had never heard before this day. I kept my hands flat on the table and thought about the woman in the driver's license photo, the woman who had never existed, and the life I was supposed to live for her.
I sat at the table a while longer, listening to the house settle around me. The folder was closed, the lamp was on, and the kitchen was quiet. Eventually, I stood up, switched off the lamp, and let the dark take the room.
The stairs creaked under my feet as I climbed, the treads worn smooth in the center from decades of use. I passed the guest bedrooms without looking in, their doors standing open and empty, and stopped at the end of the hall outside the master bedroom. The door was still ajar from before. I pushed it open and stepped inside.
The room was dark except for the faint glow of moonlight coming through the window. The queen bed sat against the wall, its white duvet a pale rectangle in the gloom. I stood at the foot of it for a long moment, just looking at it.
I was going to have to sleep in this body. Lie down in it, close my eyes in it, wake up in it. There was no part of the night that would let me out of it.
I turned on the bedside lamp, and the room jumped into focus. The whitewashed armoire stood against the wall, the mirror still closed. The chest of drawers where I'd found the tank top and shorts and that impossible drawer of underwear. The window facing the hills, where the moon had risen over the treeline and hung low and silver in the sky.
I pulled back the duvet and the sheet beneath it. The sheets were clean and white, soft cotton, and they smelled faintly of something like lavender. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at my bare legs, pale in the lamplight, the heather grey shorts riding high on my thighs.
What did people wear to bed? Justin had slept in boxers and a t-shirt, usually. Sometimes just boxers if it was hot. I didn't have a t-shirt appropriate for this body. The tank top was already on, soft and fitted, and it was the most comfortable thing I'd worn all day.
I reached back and turned off the lamp, letting the dark swallow the room again. Moonlight through the window laid a silver path across the floor.
I slid under the sheets.
The mattress was soft, softer than Justin's had been, and the sheets were cool against my legs. I lay on my back, arms at my sides, staring up at the ceiling. The tank top was comfortable. The shorts were comfortable. But the body they were wrapped around was not mine, and I felt every inch of it pressing against the mattress in ways I'd never felt a body press before.
I tried to find a position that didn't feel strange. On my side, but my hips were wider now, and the curve of them against the mattress was an unfamiliar pressure. On my stomach, but I couldn't get comfortable there, because the weight of my breasts against the sheet was the worst, pushing me up at an angle I couldn't ignore, making every breath I took aware of the soft, heavy flesh beneath the tank top.
I ended up on my back again, staring at the ceiling, my hands resting on my stomach. The tank top had ridden up slightly, and my fingers brushed the bare skin of my waist.
Somewhere outside, an owl called. I lay there in the dark, listening to it, feeling the cotton of the tank top move against my chest with every breath.
The thing was, I was tired. Bone tired, that deep, heavy exhaustion that comes from a day of more than physical labor, a day of being unmade and remade and driven down a gravel road to a house that didn't know me. My eyelids were heavy. But every time I started to drift, the awareness of my own body yanked me back. The weight on my chest. The warm hollow between my legs. The long, smooth skin of my thighs moving against each other as I shifted.
I lay there for what felt like a long time. The owl called again. The wind moved through the field grass outside. The house creaked, settling into the cool night air, the way old houses do.
I turned onto my side, tucking my hand under the pillow, and tried to will myself to sleep. The pillow was soft and cool against my cheek. My hair, this long, thick honey-blonde hair, fell across my face, and I had to push it back, which was a motion I had never made in my life before today. Justin's hair had been short, no more than an inch at the top. I had never had to push hair out of my face.
But my hand knew what to do. It rose, brushed the strands back over my ear, and settled again. The motion was natural. Instinctive.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the dark behind my lids.
Sleep came slowly, in pieces. I'd drift for a few minutes, then surface, aware of the thong against my skin, or the curve of my hip against the mattress, or the sensation of my own breath moving through my chest. Each time, the shock of remembering was the same. Like waking up from a dream into the same nightmare.
At some point, I must have stopped surfacing.
I dreamed of the river. A wide, slow river I'd never seen before, running through a green valley. In the dream, I was standing on the bank, and the water was dark and deep. I knew I had to cross, but I couldn't see the other side. I stood there for a long time, watching the current move, and then I stepped forward.
I woke with a gasp, tangled in the sheets. The moonlight had shifted across the floor, closer to the window now. The room was still dark. The house was still quiet.
I lay there, breathing hard, my heart hammering in my chest. My body was damp with sweat, the tank top clinging to my skin. I pulled the sheet off and sat up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
The floorboards were cool under my bare feet. I looked at the window, at the moon hanging low and silver, and I thought about the woman in the driver's license photo. Sabrina Marie Parker. The life she was supposed to have lived. The friend who would come visit in the spring.
None of it was real. But I was here, in her bed, in her house, in her body, and that was as real as anything I'd ever known.
I sat on the edge of the bed, in the dark, and waited for the trembling to stop. When it did, I lay back down, turned onto my side again, and pulled the duvet up to my chin.
The owl called once more, then went quiet.