“Two years,” Jeremy said, and Ellen nodded.
“Who else knows?” Izzy asked, hoping, strangely, that everyone else already knew, that she was the last to find out.
“No one else,” said Jeremy. “Well, Harris and Callie know. We never kept it from them.”
“And they’re okay with it?” Izzy asked, incredulous, feeling like she was improvising a soap opera.
“Yes,” Ellen said. “We’re not hurting anyone, okay? You can stop staring at us with those goddamned Precious Moments eyes.”
“We’re all adults and we’re all making our own decisions,” said Jeremy.
“This is temporary, until the project ends. We want Eli and Marnie to have all the opportunities that they deserve, but we deserve our own happiness, don’t we?” Ellen said. “Then, when the project is over, Jeremy and I will take Marnie and Eli and we’ll start a new life and—”
“Ellen, please,” Jeremy interrupted. “Not now.”
“Why does it matter at this point?” Ellen said.
“Just please, Ellen,” Jeremy said, resting his face in his cupped hands, breathing deeply.
There was silence in the room, all three of them unable to continue. Izzy gripped the journal so hard that she thought it might burst into flames. She prayed for it to burst into flames, to provide a distraction so that she could run out of the house.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Ellen said. “Not Dr. Grind. Not Carmen. No one.”
“Okay,” Izzy said, saying only what she thought would get her out of this situation.
“Do not be the reason that we all get kicked out of the project, Izzy,” Jeremy said. “Do you want to be responsible for Eli and Marnie having to leave the family? Do you want to break this family apart?”
“No, of course not,” Izzy said, feeling very much like the entire affair had been her fault, that her carelessness, not Ellen’s and Jeremy’s, had caused this.
Ellen finally laughed, a ragged little breath of irritation and wonder. “You just had to come see me today,” she said to Jeremy. “You couldn’t wait until tomorrow when I’d come to the farm.”
Jeremy looked very much like a man who was just now realizing the choices he had made in his life; he looked so much older. “Ellen, please,” he said, once again.
Ellen looked at Izzy. She seemed almost grateful to have someone else to talk to. She waved off Jeremy with the flick of her wrist and then said, “I remember when we first moved here, a lot of us women were not exactly thrilled that you were coming to the complex, a single mother, like you were some kind of free agent. Some of us worried that you would try to take one of our husbands. It was kind of a thing for a few months and then everybody realized that you were really sweet and not a psycho and it was going to be okay.” Ellen laughed and then said, “Honestly, I was the one who was most upset about the possibility of you stealing Harris from me.”
Izzy looked back at those first few months at the complex, but couldn’t remember any tension with the other men and women in the family. Perhaps it was because that first year was so strange, regardless of whether people were worried about her status as a single woman, everyone trying to get used to the idea of being a new parent, of adjusting to life in the complex. Still, she felt the residual embarrassment of having been talked about, of being singled out, and then she reminded herself that the real issue was with Ellen and Jeremy.
“I have to go,” Izzy said, holding up the journal, forever holding up that fucking journal. “I have to get back to the kitchen.”
“I told Marnie not to forget her journal,” Ellen said, shaking her head.