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“Dix,” the man said, freighting the name full of disappointment. “Why are you here?”

Dix took a moment to assess the man in front of him. So this was Darius. The man at the center of The Source. Short, slender. Pretty.

Christ,
Dix thought,
he could be a girl. So insubstantial. Hardly a worthy adversary.

“I’m not sure,” Dix answered. “Just kinda ended up here.”

Dix watched Darius look him up and down, saw his eyes flick over to his truck, where his loaded gun rack stood in stark silhouette in the back window.

“We are a sanctuary, Dix,” Darius said. “Your presence is disturbing.”

Dix looked Darius up and down again as well. He was wearing roughed-up clothes that clearly had not earned their ragged edges honestly. Like those factory-aged jeans teenagers bought at the mall. He wondered what Miranda saw in this guy. Then it occurred to him how much alike they were. Soft, spoiled, fake. Trying to be unique by acquiring the tropes of individuality. His anger at Darius, at the both of them, was driven out for a moment by a wave of pity and disgust.

“Shut up, Darius,” Dix said dismissively, as if he were talking to a barking but chained dog. “I want to see Miranda.”

“I understand, Dix,” Darius said, apparently ignoring the insult, his voice oily and cool. “But it’s better for her not to see you. She was very upset the last time you came. It took her some time to recover her equilibrium. I know you want what’s best for her. We all want what’s best for her. What’s best for her now is to be here. Where there is peace and where she is cared for within the structure of our supportive community.”

In the face of this slick and sanctimonious stonewalling, Dix’s anger returned, even stronger than before. It was an emotion he had blocked for Miranda, but he had no hesitation showing it to this man.

“You bastard,” he growled. “You know nothing about Miranda, about what’s best for her. You’re a fucking charlatan.” He took a few steps forward. Darius’s face remained maddeningly still and expressionless. Dix pointed his finger toward the chest of the man in front of him. “Who do you think you are, anyway? You are a joke. You are a poser. A rich boy trying to find himself by playing games out here on this land. This place will take you down, Darius. Mark my words, these mountains will take you down.”

The door behind Darius opened. A woman emerged, her pale skin set off by the bags under her red-rimmed eyes and the curtain of hair that hung limply alongside her caved-in cheeks. She wore a low-slung skirt and a long sweater that clung to her swollen breasts and protruding belly. Dix did not recognize her until she said his name.

“Dix. Please. You’re scaring us. You’re scaring me.”

Miranda cradled her stomach with her palms in the subconscious and universal motion of pregnant women. Dix looked in desperation from Miranda to Darius and back again. Miranda shook her head slowly in an expression of weary dismissal. Her words came back to him in mockery. No sex at The Source. What a fool he had been for believing her, for working so hard to sweep away all his nagging doubts. Here was the damning evidence of what he had suspected but not wanted to admit all along: Darius had given her what Dix could not. She was not here out on some selfless, do-gooder impulse. She was here, had been here all along, because she was in love with this horrible blue-eyed devil of a man. She had lied to herself. She had lied to him. Dix was flooded with despair, regret, and shame—emotions he had never before experienced in even a small quantity and now felt in an engulfing wave. Miranda took a step forward. Darius held up his hand to her, and she obediently stalled where she was. Dix stumbled backward. He fell against his truck and banged his fist against the metal hood. He threw himself inside and sped away, spewing a wave of gravel behind him.

When Miranda had started to show, she had gained a new and different position in the community. Sally watched Darius single her out for one-on-one, whispered conversations, a coach conferring with his star athlete. She saw the other women begin to sidestep her, not as a pariah, but in deference. Sally searched for a moment when she could speak to Miranda privately. Back when Miranda was just a day camper, she would meet Sally’s eyes, initiate conversation, and invite connection. But after she joined The Source full-time, there was an initial and short-lived bloom of enthusiasm and engagement with everything, and then Miranda’s face grew increasingly somber and her energy turned inward, a tendency that increased when her pregnancy became clear. It was harder to talk to Miranda than it used to be. To even share a simple greeting. From what Sally could tell, it appeared that Miranda still participated in the orchestrated events and chores, but she spoke less and kept to herself more. Sally recalled Miranda telling her once, just before she moved to The Source, that she and Dix had been trying to get pregnant. She wondered if Dix knew they’d succeeded. Or if their estrangement was so complete that Miranda was keeping this all to herself. Sally watched her as closely as she could or dared, and caught the knowing glances Darius shot at Miranda. They seemed intended to nudge, instruct, perhaps remind her of something. Sally knew the asexual Darius was not the father, but he seemed to be trying to exert some sort of ownership over Miranda’s pregnancy, as if he saw it as an opportunity. For what, Sally could not imagine. She knew the only way she could find out was to get Miranda alone.

The days were short and Sally was restless, often awake in the predawn hours, standing at her window, willing the day to come on, wondering why she was still at The Source. Saving money, watching the house, morbid curiosity—she mentally ticked off the reasons. She also felt as if she was waiting for something to happen; she just didn’t know what or why. And now, there was also her concern for Miranda. Miranda was one of those people, Sally recognized, who incited worry in others. There was a delicacy and callowness to her that made one want to put away sharp objects, cover pointy corners, strew clean straw in her path. None of which Miranda was aware of. Which made the effort that much more compelling.

One clear, dark morning when the stars were bright pinpricks in the indigo sky, Sally stood at her window trying to talk herself not so much into leaving as out of staying. Then she noticed a dim light warming a window in the trailer. The structure had been abandoned, a chemical pariah, after the fire. But as she watched, a distinctive silhouette came into view through the busted-out window. Sally quickly pulled on boots and a coat and tiptoed out of the house, across the yard, and into the trailer. Miranda turned as Sally closed the door behind her. Her expression was troubled, her skin sallow. Sally wondered if she was ill. The thought scared her, as it came to her more as a premonition than a question. Some women glowed with vibrancy when pregnant. Miranda appeared as if the baby was draining the life from her as it grew.

“Miranda, honey,” Sally said gently, as if she were approaching a spooked horse. “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s cold. This place is polluted.”

“It’s OK. The windows are open,” Miranda said, her eyes drifting over the sharp shards that framed the opening above the stove.

Sally decided against explaining how little the open window would help clear the place from chemicals used to cook meth. “Miranda, are you OK?” she asked instead. “Is everything OK with you? With the baby?”

Miranda slowly bent over, righted a metal chair from where it was lying on the floor, and with exquisite exhaustion, sank into it. Her shoulders looked thin. The swelling in her womb seemed to be drawing sustenance from her other body parts. “Oh, the baby is fine.” She patted her belly and a wan smile drifted onto and then off her face. “I’m not sleeping very well,” she said. “That’s all.”

“Me neither,” Sally replied.

“Guess I’m a little frustrated,” Miranda said. “Seems we’re never going to be a haven for wayward youth, after all. Kind of a disaster here. And now, apparently, word on the street is that this place is a big ‘drag,’” she sighed, making air quotes with her fingers.

Sally was surprised and unsettled to hear this accurate but dismal assessment of the situation at The Source from Miranda, the truest of its true believers.

“Well, maybe there will be a new generation of teens who show up,” Sally said tentatively.

“A new generation,” Miranda said. “You sound like Darius.”

“That’s a little scary,” Sally joked.

Miranda spread her hands over her extended midsection and stared at them.

“That’s what Darius wants,” she said. “To create a new generation, totally free from the distractions and seductions of modern life. With only Mother Nature as a teacher and guide.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Mother Nature can be quite a bitch,” Sally said. As Miranda described Darius’s vision for her baby, Sally heard skepticism battling against belief. This was a first, coming from Miranda. Sally needed to find a way to take advantage of this, to steer Miranda further from Darius and back toward Dix. It was a delicate, risky moment.

“Miranda?” she said. The other woman did not look up. “Are you thinking about when you’ll return with the baby to Dix?”

“Return?” Miranda said, her face still turned downward, confusion furrowing her brow. “Oh, I don’t think that’s possible. Darius wants me to stay. Wants us to stay. We’ll fumigate and fix up the trailer for the two of us. We’ll all raise the baby together. The baby will be free and innocent and become a model of what’s possible in the world. He says he has realized that individuals get too damaged, in too many ways, too quickly, so repair and restoration become impossible. We need a ‘tabula rasa,’ he says.” She’d made the air quotes again. “My baby came at just the right time, a gift from the universe, a gift we need to give back to the universe. That’s what Darius thinks.”

Miranda’s tone was entirely unconvincing. Another rote retelling of someone else’s vision. Sally felt prickles of sweat break out under her arms and on her lip and brow, even though the room was cold. “But, Miranda,” she said.

“I agree with him, Sally.”

“But.”

“I know. I know,” Miranda sighed. “The child is not mine alone.”

“Exactly.”

“Dix did want a baby. I think he did, anyway. Actually, I’m not so sure. It was always more my idea. I was the one who was pushing for it. He kept saying we had plenty of time. He was just indulging me. Like he always did. He didn’t really care if we had a child or not. I realize that now.”

“Still. He is the father,” Sally said.

“I know. But these ideas of ownership,” Miranda hurried on. “Of owning another person. She’s mine. He’s mine. That child is hers or his. That child needs to grow up to reflect my values, be an expression of me, the parent. Just like my car and address and job title are a reflection of me. That’s not a baby—that’s a doll you dress up. Wouldn’t it be so much better to just let my child have many parents and guardians and teachers? To wander outdoors instead of being chained to a chair in a classroom? Isn’t that the more natural way? A much better way? Darius says my baby could have a birth mother, a garden mother, a house mother, an instructional mother. That all seems so much better. And Dix would hate all of that. He’d never support me in the way I, the way
we
want to raise this baby.”

Miranda seemed to be trying to talk herself into the words that were bubbling from her mouth.

No, no, no,
Sally wanted to say.
That’s just Darius-talk.

But before she could reply, the door opened again and the man himself walked in. His eyes flitted from one woman to another, and a forced smile split his face in two.

“What’s going on out here?” he asked with an obvious effort to keep his tone friendly. “Getting a head start on making this place your own?” Sally saw his obvious effort to ignore her. He inclined his head toward Miranda. “But you should be in bed, my dear,” he went on, touching Miranda on the shoulder. “This place may still have some chemical vestiges that are not good for our baby.”

“Our” baby?
Sally thought, outrage heating her face. She wanted to smack Darius across his temple with the large wooden spoon lying close by on the counter.
I can’t leave her here alone. I can’t leave her and her baby undefended from this man.

Darius ran the back of his hand along Miranda’s arm a few times, then wrapped his fingers around her biceps and coaxed her, unresisting, from her chair. He nudged her toward the door. She crossed the small space in a few shuffling steps. Darius crossed his arms over his chest and watched her go.

Once Miranda was outdoors and on her way back to the house, he turned and hissed at Sally, “Stay the fuck out of this.”

Then he was gone, leaving Sally in a miasma of garlic and manure, acetone and char, cold air and fear.