If the Fates Allow

by Rainbow Rowell

Reagan was the person you called when you wanted someone to talk you into leaving your husband. Or when you needed someone to call the bank to straighten out your overdraft fees.

No one called Reagan for comfort. No one called Reagan to offer any. No one ever said, “I’m lonely, could you come by?”—and no one ever came by. Even before this bullshit.

But she wasn’t even sure that no one in her family had had Covid. They wouldn’t tell her if they had. Half of them didn’t wear masks—half of Nebraska wouldn’t wear a mask. Her brother kept posting conspiracy theories on Facebook, and Reagan was the only one arguing with him.

They were the sort of people who got laid off right before Christmas and got pregnant in the back seat of cars. Why were they willing to roll these dice?

“I’ll stay home for two weeks, Grandpa. I’ll be totally quarantined.” “Well, I don’t know that I want you to do that for me, Reagan . . .” “I want to do it.”

Maybe Reagan wouldn’t see her cousins again until the next funeral. The next Zoom funeral.

“I only know how to make an eighteen-pound turkey. I didn’t feel like experimenting.”

Reagan had never really had a conversation with her grandfather before. They’d always been part of a larger group—

parents. They didn’t really have an existing dynamic. So they talked about the things that had brought them together today: Their worry. Their caution. Their firm belief that most people were idiots.

That was a nice discovery, that her grandpa seemed to dislike peopl...

“Your grandmother would want us to say grace,” he said, after they’d piled up their plates. “Hmm.” Reagan was noncommittal. She’d already taken a bite of turkey. “But if she wanted me to keep saying grace,” he went on, “she should have outlived me.”

“I kept telling her . . . that if she wanted me to get into heaven, she’d have to deliver me herself.” Reagan laughed. There were tears in her eyes. “That woman had no follow-through.”

She framed every school photo the grandkids ever gave her, always leaving the old ones inside so that the pictures stacked up and made the backs hard to close. Reagan’s senior picture was sitting on a coffee table in the living room, and if you opened it up, her whole childhood would spring out.

“To be honest, sometimes I’m glad your grandma didn’t have to live through this. I think about it sometimes, that she never heard about it. She never worried about it. She never lost anyone to it. She left before she ever had to take on this burden. And I’m glad for that.”

“What are you out here avoiding?” she asked, sliding the elastic behind her ears.

thought I was doing my grandpa good by making sure he could still have a Christmas, but I think I’m just reminding him that it’s Christmas and that she isn’t here.”

“Well, my brother’s family just broke down our wall, you know? They crossed our perimeter.”

It’s like—the air in there is different now. And if I go back in, I’m part of it.

don’t even know what it means to be crazy. If you’re as careful as you’re supposed to be, you seem neurotic. I feel neurotic. Now.

They’ve been acting normal this whole time. I haven’t seen my mom since March.”

“I’m not sure how to do this,” she said. “You could set it on the deck, then back away from it.”

He looked like a chipmunk. She definitely would have pointed that out in high school; he was right to steer clear of her.

“This stuff is like a time machine.”

“I’m not sure I ever had friends in Arnold.”

“Pfft. Levi’s fine. He’s got a wife and three kids and fifty bison.” She still talked to Levi once a week, even though they broke up in college. (Reagan didn’t let many people into her life—but once she’d gone to the effort, she didn’t like to let go of them.)

Reagan nodded, at another loss for words. What had this pandemic done to her? She’d never been much of a talker, but she’d always been able to find words when she wanted them. Now her head and mouth felt empty. She felt like she carried emptiness around with her, a six-foot radius of it.

“She’s fine,” Reagan said. “She’ll live to spread ticks and disease, and destroy crops. Where’d she get you?”

This was the second person to touch her today. The second person in ten months.

(She didn’t need people the way other people needed people, but she still needed . . . something.)

“I’m tired of waiting for it to get better, honey. It feels like we should all get together before it gets worse.”

She’d spent too much of the last two years feeling paranoid and vulnerable. She’d gotten through Thanksgiving at her mom’s house by sitting next to an open window. And she got through most other social situations by avoiding them.

Reagan didn’t know how to tell her sister that she only sort of judged her. That she wished Caitlin had been more careful, but that she also didn’t believe that being careful was enough. And more than all that, she was just worried about her. She was constantly worried about all of them.

“Sometimes I think you don’t want to get back to normal, Reagan. Sometimes I think you like it better this way.” Sometimes Reagan agreed with her.

He was standing on his deck, leaning on the railing, looking out into the field. She’d known she’d find him out here . . . No, that wasn’t quite true. She’d just hoped that she would.

“Hopefully. If we all die, the only people left will be these shitheads.”