“the fact that Ronny drops by all the time now, supposedly to bring me more chicken feed, but sometimes just if he’s passing,”

Our narrator’s mind struggles with painful memories, most often those involving her mother:

“the fact that I had to grit my teeth this morning and sort through Mommy’s old sewing box, but it wasn’t so bad in the end, the fact that I put it off for years, because I’m just so darn terrified of remembering anything,”

Although after working through the sewing box, she reaches this lovely, Proustian hued conclusion:

“the fact that madeleines are like little memory sticks, but when you bite into one you get closure,”

On the other hand, there are a good many things in her past with which she seems unable or unwilling to relive and resolve.

“the fact that I blanked out most of my cancer treatment, but the present is what matters,”

And it’s hard to say which the narrator finds her more troublesome, her memories or thoughts abouts the uncomfortable and fearful present. Take Ronny, the local guy who delivers her chicken feed. He’s first mentioned on page two of the novel and occasionally thereafter when her chickens or chicken feed comes to mind. But it seems he’s more and more on her mind with the first indication we get that Ronny is a nuisance or worse here:

“the fact that it’s getting to the point where, because of all his unscheduled visits, I now have to try to be presentable at all times, just for Ronny, a guy I hardly even know, for Pete’s sake, and he’s always remarking on how I look, which makes me so self-conscious,”

And Ronny is armed. He keeps a gun on the front seat of his pick-up truck. We know that the narrator is fearful of the fact that many people in her community have guns and that going around with a gun is even facilitated by the state’s Open Carry laws. But is Ronny a “predator” or simply a sexist bore with whom she has nothing in common?

“the fact that I never know what to say when Ronny turns up, especially when he’s wearing that MAGA T-shirt of his, the fact that I think maybe he expects me to offer him a cup of coffee but if I did it once, I’d have to do it every time, and then I’d have to talk to him more and more and more, or listen to him rather,”

“the fact that Ronny drops by all the time now, supposedly to bring me more chicken feed, but sometimes just if he’s passing, passing by, Beethoven, the fact that I really don’t much feel like asking him in when I’m all alone here,”

For the narrator it is a very difficult position to be in. Nothing yet has happened with respect to Ronny that she can identify as a bad act or a threatened one. And yet his presence is menacing to her. You will recall that the lioness moved her cubs to a new den when she smelt the lion’s scent in their vicinity. To be female and stalked is a horrible feeling. When to “leap?” How to “recoil?”