Jean's roots were healing. Brittle and rotting, she'd turned a blind eye to them, instead lovingly tending to the young sprouts and leaves shooting up once she'd settled in warmer earth. Can a tree thrive when its roots are decaying? Yes, she'd thought, yes, because she was not a fucking tree. Humans could rip up their feet from the place they were born and leave their miserable origins behind, no problem. A whole new start.

Then, she danced with a woman pressed against her front, hands possessing her hips, and dove between silken legs trustingly spread before her, and was teased by a boy of the type that would've tormented her twenty years ago, and stood in the middle of the street and announced her love to a town that'd once swallowed it in pieces and kept them down, an act of defiance that made her heart pound in her chest. Her roots woke, stretched, tested their feet, tasted the pavement and asphalt concrete, and it turned out she was a tree after all. Fuck.

Pamela. Tiffany. Danny. Anna. Roni. Kara. Reece. Sloane. Michelle. How were you supposed to know which one you belonged to when you were always divided by a past not shared, a decaying part that could not be explained? She remembered Michelle's patient nods, there to humor her, the tentative suggestions to go to therapy. The idea of sitting in a chair to talk about your insides to a stranger with a notebook made her throw up. It wouldn't be like the camp, Michelle had insisted, she wasn't the only queer professional, there were more, she could write a referral. But Jean had still believed she wasn't a tree, so there was no need for anyone to go digging around her mind.

Wrapped around Mary, planting kisses on her shoulder, giggling, smoking, crying, talking, the pain of remembering eased and softened. They had been true. Maybe she hadn't managed to hold onto anyone because she'd still been reaching for the one pulled from her grasp.

Love could be so easy. How about that.

"So, about coming home..." She was fidgety, forgetting to finish breathing out before talking, the cord swinging back and forth as she clutched the receiver tight.

"Oh, honey," Nina said, and wasn't it good luck that she was the one to pick up, "you made love to her, didn't you?"

Only Nina could use that euphemism without an ounce of embarrassment. At first, she wanted to laugh, but it died out before she could do more than curl her lips. "Yeah," she said, because wasn't that exactly what they were doing?

"What was it like?"

What was it like? What was it like.

It was like never having been hurt at all. It was belonging. Claiming, reclaiming. Knowing that she would forever hold all of Mary's firsts in her palm, that no one would be able to rob her of that. It was two girls who were now women carrying the knowledge of what it was to live without, that their coming together was not solely exciting but a protest.

It was taking down the key and crucifix and laying them to rest.

"It was... good," she said instead, as she'd never been able to explain that part of herself.

Nina giggled. "Oh, you're in trouble now, Jean," she said, and it was funny and light, and wouldn't it have been perfect if that was what it would've remained?

The front door creaked and closed, and Jean turned towards the light and pretty footsteps, as apparently, footsteps could be pretty now. The love floated into the kitchen and filled it up.

"Hey, you," Jeanie said, smiling, since the owner of the footsteps was even prettier.

"Hi," Mary said, cheeks blushing like the scent of the roses that clung to her, which in Jeanie's mind were pink, hands clasped together. The adorable breathlessness of her, almost like a child preparing to ask for something they were afraid would be dismissed. "I just got off work, thought I'd stop by to bring you those boxes. I put them in the hallway."

Like she needed an excuse. Like they hadn't said the things they'd said, done the things they'd done.

Jean tried to keep from grinning, knowing full well she would grant any wish. So, she said, "Great. While you're here, though, think you could spare me a kiss or two?" These roots that were mending and growing brought out a cheesy side of her she didn't know she possessed, almost disconcertingly romantic, and it was only then a flurry of giggles reminded her she had Nina on the phone. She found she didn't care. Let them hear they'd all been wrong.

"Oh, well," Mary said, in fake contemplation, even though she was already drawn forward. "Think I could do one, yes. Or two, depending on how the first one goes."

Jean healed a little more. "Wait a sec, Nina," and she dropped the phone, the same moment Mary reached her and planted a soft kiss on her jaw, obviously meant as a tease, only her breath hitched, and before Jeanie could process the pattering of her own heartbeat, the glow of Mary's soft devotion, she was pushed against the counter, eager hands tangled in her hair, and kisses no longer coy but feverish, more than one, more than two, in fact, touching the whole of her.

Before she remembered to smash the receiver into the cradle, she swore she heard Tiffany yell: "Be safe, gals!"

To be sixteen again. To sneak around with the most beautiful girl in the whole state of Texas, to be the one to kiss her, have late-night whisper talks about fears and wishes and love, about missed opportunities and ones still up for grabs, to giggle and shush and listen for footsteps, hold hands in the car — to be seen and know that you are known, completely, that you are remembered.

A summer of dreams.

The Bible was put on the shelf, and Mary watched in wonder as it collected dust, and she watched Mary.

Mary's eyes were the kind of sea blue on a rainy day when the clouds blocked the light from reaching the waves. No, they were the blueberry blue that became exposed when you squished one between your fingers. Or no, the blue of the denim jeans Mary wore to please and entice her, or were they the blue of a cornflower? No, too light.

Every time Jean thought she'd pinned the color down, she looked again, and it was different. This frustrated her: sometimes, she woke up in the middle of the night to take one more moment to memorize the shape of her face and the blonde of her mussed-up hair. Mary had slipped from her mind once. She wasn't going to let that happen again.

So, they kissed, and she studied the softness of her lips, the shape of them, the different shades of moans and tones and laughter, the twang in the Southerness of her voice that she detested on herself, how the sun caught her hair and made it shine golden, the crayon-y taste of her lipstick, how she would tremble from just watching her and redden when caught — Jean studied and studied and studied, like she hadn't done since she'd dropped out of school.

Mary asked her what she was doing, but Jeanie didn't tell. She was scared it would sound like she was preparing to leave, which she wasn't. Her roots were healing, after all.

Weeks ago, just after Missy's first baseball game, she'd fished an envelope from the mailbox, emblazoned with the logo of the old folks' home Uncle Carl had been shipped off to. She'd traced her name with her fingers, Ms J. Lucas, and stood like that for minutes before moving it to the kitchen table. It had lived there for a few days until it started leering at her first thing in the morning, so she'd sentenced it to her suitcase. She only remembered when she went rummaging around for her spare bottle of shampoo, and in a moment of courage, she'd ripped it open and digested the contents.

The letter contained one of her rotting roots: Uncle Carl was doing worse, his memory slipping through the cracks, and if she wished to visit him, they advised her not to wait too long. But she was only just repairing her friendship with Mary, and balancing two old parts of her life would be too heavy on her shoulders, so she filed the message away for later. Mary was now. Everything else was later. Jean, what're you gonna do, get back in the closet? Sneak around for the rest of your life? Wear a dress, go to church? Her friends didn't understand: she'd tiptoed around her love for the better part of her childhood; she knew the playbook. Hiding from the world was ingrained in her being. Her roots were helping her remember.

Their love was tangled up in the sheets on a Sunday morning with the curtains closed — so the sun didn't glare into the old beast of a television she'd managed to get working, of course. Grainy images of stretched-out beaches cast flickers on the walls, and Jean was only half watching, half listening to the tinny sounds of the teenagers on screen. Mary had said something about needing to check if it was appropriate for Missy to watch, like her daughter wouldn't just go behind her back if she said no, and here she was, lying on her stomach in Jean's shirt, hair already combed, engrossed in a lousy remake of a movie whose original had been awful to begin with. She would never approve this for Missy. For herself, though?

Jean grinned behind her back, steeling closer to the form concealed by grayish sheets, and in one swift motion, pulled them off — Mary yelped in surprise as her feet got caught in the piled up linnen, and Jeanie laughed and seized hold of her ass, planting a kiss right below her shifted panties.

"Jeanie Lucas! Don't you — oh..."

Was she glad she was still Jeanie to someone — the best one. She could bear the nasty stares of the outside world if she could be Jeanie in her lover's arms. She plopped down onto the mattress, shifted closer, and took the sheets' place, a heavenly mess of hot legs and bellies and skin.

"Remember what my daddy used to say, hm?" she murmured into smokey hair. "You better give your heart to Jesus, child, 'cause your butt is mine." She mimicked his deep voice, the curt cadence of it.

Mary, however, broke free and regarded her with bleeding compassion in the wide blue. Her neck was beautiful like this: naked, not weighed down by the shackles of the cross. "And it was awful, wasn't it? I could never imagine George ever beating down on Missy like that." The wide blue turned glossy and carved out the bottom of Jean's stomach. So much for an offhanded joke. Mary traced her ear, shoulder, clavicle, like the bruises were reappearing in real time, and somehow, her skin burned and throbbed under her touch.

"Yeah, well. Different times."

"Can't believe my mother never —"

"She didn't know, remember?" She took Mary's hand and kissed her knuckles, hoping it would stop the phantom hurt. "We were master concealers. Learned young."

The moment was pierced by an impassioned and badly acted speech, and on screen, the teenagers kissed against the sunset. Mary watched with lips pursed in disapproval, and she almost expected her to go tell them off.

"Was it true, what you told Missy?" Mary asked then, nervously rubbing her chest, like she was looking for the comfort of her necklace. "That you... enjoy being with men?"

"Yeah. Dated a few."

She blushed, almost crimson. "But it's better with... well... right?"

"Doesn't matter for me. But it's okay if that's the case for you. I know plenty of women who feel like that."

"Hmm. Maybe it was just George's lack of skill."

"Brenda seems to think differently."

Mary opened her mouth a moment before she erupted into scandalized giggles, hiding her face behind her hands. Jean watched her work through it, collect herself, and damn, why did she suddenly look so young and innocent?

"But," Mary continued, still red, "then why not marry a man?"

Jean could hardly blame her. This was drilled into her, conforming, fitting in, and cutting off the part of you that was deemed immoral, just to live an easier, smoother life. Not to her, though. The breakfast she cooked for men would disintegrate into ashes on her tongue, the clothes she folded would unravel when she put them away.

She was not meant to live in a closet.

Unlike other kids, Jean had never had any desire for a family. Mamas left. Daddies whipped you with their belts. Old ladies you were instructed to call aunt tutted at you, and men you had to call uncle ignored you or told you you were growing into a pretty young lady. Real Uncles you liked lit up funny-smelling cigarettes you weren't allowed to touch, and you were warned to stay away from the good-for-nothings they were.

Sometimes, Mary's mama blew out a cloud of smoke across the dinner table, her boys raising a racket around her, and the cloud would cover her eyes, and Jean would think: this is the weariness that drove my mama away. Sometimes, mamas could love their kids and still be done with them. They only had two choices: leave or stay. Her mama chose to split. Mary's mama chose to stay. Jean knew it didn't really matter when you were a girl. You were damned either way.

No, most of all, Jean had wanted to be parentless, popped out into the universe out of mere stardust, quick as a sudden appearance of a plane against the sky. Assemble her family from scratch, handpick the best of the bunch, peaches with the softest skins and the finest colors — preferably with a few dents here and there, from their rough tumble towards the earth. Mary had been the sweetest fruit, and for a while, two was the most satisfying number.

A hard lesson taught her that even chosen families could be torn apart, but then she was rescued by a bright and bubbly bunch that didn't share blood but had each other's backs, and she'd perked up thinking she could build one too, so that when Mary finally came and joined her, she would be able to say: look, we're not alone. Look, the world isn't scary. Only once she came back down from the high did she crash and start to doubt if Mary would even want to be parentless. If she'd ever wanted any of this.

Then, she woke up one morning as a thirty-four-year-old woman and sobbed in the bed she'd shared with Michelle, terrified of the bone-deep longing that had nestled itself in the crook of her heart overnight, dripping into her veins like a spoiled peach. She couldn't explain it; it was irrational and went against everything she believed, but she needed proof of existence, proof that she had been a child and teenager and that she had persevered and walked this earth, that she hadn't popped into existence out of mere stardust — because planes disappeared just as fast as they came. She had seen it happen. All those men, dying alone in their hospital beds because of a disease spread by love, claimed by so many, just not on paper.

Mary was the key to everything. A past, a present — a future? She came with a sort of mother-in-law, whom she understood better now that she was older. A sort of grown-up son who was too comfortable asking her for sex tips (she'd directed him to Tiffany), and a sort of teenage son, who was lovable and queer in a completely different sense, and a sort of daughter, who craved attention as much as her own mother had at that age. After all those decades lived, was this what she actually desired? Suburban domesticity?

Yes, she thought, when she joined the family at the table, brushing her hand against her lover's under the tablecloth and basking in the shine of her eyes.

No, she thought, when she called the plumber to fix the toilet at the bowling alley and they refused to come.

Yes, she thought, when she was stirring the macaroni, and Mary breezed into the kitchen with that eager smile of hers and snaked her arms around her waist. She leaned back into her embrace, swooning under the kisses on her neck — "Mare, the kids are home," she said, and it was simultaneously riveting and depressing to say.

"Oh, they don't leave their rooms, anyway," Mary said, swatting the air with one hand like it was nothing to her. Happy Mary was beautiful. Happy Mary was reckless. Happy Mary took her breath away, her senses and defenses, and made her think I can do this.

It started with a chaste peck, like it always did, Mary testing if it still felt the same, maybe, and it was followed by a sigh against her lips, a blush, the recapturing of her mouth — the wooden spoon motionless in Jean's grip, raking her fingers through the softness of beachy blonde waves. She could cook for these kisses forever, and any dish would taste of this, Mary coming home in her pink dress with the brightest smile and Jean on her mind.

"Oh."

They didn't register the sound at first. They sprang apart too late, reflexes diminished by a false peace of mind, a bubble of happiness, years of strutting around out and proud. The spoon clattered to the ground.

The fear — that never dulled. The interior of her daddy's Chevy had been yellowed by cigarette stains, and now he was shouting at her for the bloodstains and scratch marks she'd left on the door panel, her nails rimmed with red, same as her eyes. Begging, howling, a river of snot and tears wetting her tanktop, her shorts. Words she would never forget. Words she still sometimes woke up to, paralyzed, a shadow with a gun bending over the bed in the darkness. Cigarette ashes, diesel, and the metallic tang of blood, slurs screamed at the top of her daddy's lungs, the crucifix on the rearview mirror rattling against the windscreen.

But her daddy wasn't on this earth anymore. It was Missy standing before them, her mouth still stuck on the utterance of surprise, sweet Missy, with her familiar blue eyes and familiar freckled face.

"Jeanie."

The voice came from far away.

"Jeanie, honey, Jeanie, it's okay, breathe in, honey, breathe in, it's just Missy, it's just —"

The voice broke too, cried with her, and she barely felt the arms encircling her, pulling her close, touching her face.

"Uhm. What was it again that you said to Shelly? Uhm."

"Make a list, Jean," and a much smaller hand was laid on the small of her back. "Sheldon said that worked. Make a list. What're you cooking?"

Macaroni, zucchini, canned tomatoes, basil, cheese, bell pepper, ground beef — yes, zucchini and bell pepper — because she was seriously worried about this family's vegetable intake.

Slowly, faces came into focus, blueberry or not blue eyes blinking rapidly as they stared at her, round and big, and a younger version, muttering, "Can't believe you aren't the one freaking out, Mom." Jean staggered back until she hit the counter, clutching the edge — macaroni, zucchini, canned tomatoes...

The last time she saw her daddy's face, looking over his shoulder as he backed the car up down the dirt road.

Daddy wasn't here. Daddy was dead. Nobody left to drag her by the elbow and throw her in the backseat.

Her feet were planted firmly on the vinyl, her weight slipping back into her body. "I'm fine," she tried to say, but she was panting. "I'm fine... This happens sometimes... Just give me a sec." She held up a hand, trying to wave them off, but she caught sight of the necklace rising up and down on Mary's chest, and her knees buckled momentarily. She squeezed her eyes shut, and her feet slid away from underneath her.

She pictured the bar. Tiffany tongue-deep into some new arrival, Michelle dancing with her glittering hoop earrings catching the light, Nina waving in and out between tables, "honey" and "sweetheart" falling from her lips like tiny gifts. Women laughing, women fighting, women in love. Women openly being their whole selves. Everyone greeting her with warmth and fondness, eager to help her clean out the bar taps and relate the latest gossip of who was sleeping with whom. No hiding.

"Jeanie."

Mary was close, right before her, citrusy shampoo, roses and cigarettes, and a hint of bowling alley sweat, and she groaned, willing herself not to cry.

"Jeanie, honey."

A hand enveloped her own, and Mary guided them forward, coming to rest on her dress and the base of her neck, soft and smooth and — warm.

The necklace was gone.

She looked into Mary's eyes and saw not the sea or the sky but her own pain reflected like shimmering splinters of glass, a tear lingering in the corner. She'd disturbed the perfectly sweet thing they'd had going on, and she cursed her own weak mind. "I'm sorry," she said, as clearly as possible.

"Oh," Mary said too, echoing her daughter, though this was an 'oh' of despair, pity, love — and was accompanied by arms around her body, hugging her tight on the kitchen floor. Jeanie sniffed, wiped her own cheeks, drew a shuddering breath. Some roots ran too deep to reach.

Something was burning. Missy reached over them to turn off the stove. Clattering pans, the hiss of hot water touching the sink, rushing down the drain. Jean leaned her throbbing head back against the cool cabinet door. It was only Missy, and Missy was a good kid. Missy liked her.

"Come on, let's sit at the table," Mary's voice was kind and caring, almost motherly, and a flush of shame ran through Jean as she was led to a chair: this must've been just as scary for the closeted ex-churchgoing ex-wife Mary was, and here she was, hogging all the attention and making it all about a thing that'd happened twenty-odd years ago.

"I'm sorry," she said again. She rubbed her face, drew more deep breaths. "I'm sorry, guys. Didn't mean to scare you."

"Don't you apologize," Mary said, still clutching her hand. "It was my fault. You were right. I shouldn't have... when anyone could walk in any moment."

"I don't think it's anybody's fault," Missy said. She'd been scraping the bottom of the skillet to loosen all the burned bits but paused now to scrutinize the pair with a distinctively Sheldon-like mix of curiosity and shrewdness. "Except for the church, probably. They were really mean to you at that camp, weren't they?"

Jean stared. Mary too. The scene was washed with a grainy layer of otherworldliness, like they'd stepped into one of those alternate universes Sheldon was so excited about, a distorted version of them traveling through the jungle with their imagined daughter.

"You're not... mad?" Mary asked. They both held their breath, following the scrubbing motions of this very real living girl, calmly unbothered.

She shrugged. "Not gonna lie, I'm a little grossed out," she said, and Mary squeezed involuntarily, "but only 'cause I never wanted to see mom kissing anyone like that. Not 'cause of sin or whatever. Sheldon and me don't believe in that, anyway."

Mary produced a breathy laugh, a mixture of relief and misplaced indignation, and reached for the necklace that wasn't there anymore. Maybe part of her still regarded this as a failure — the idea hurt, deep in Jean's throat, and she wondered, for the first time, if it would've been better if they'd never dug up their hiding skills after all.

"How long has this been going on?"

They shared a glance. This strange role reversal confused them: the kid catching the adults red-handed, assuring them she wasn't angry, fixing up dinner while trying to get to the bottom of the situation. It made Jean feel small and powerless, yet cared for. Wasn't it funny that a teenager was bestowing her the reaction she'd yearned her own daddy would've given?

"Well," Mary started, "about twenty-seven years?"

"Whoa."

"Used to call it 'the best-kept secret in all of Medford,'" Jeanie added.

"Lord," Mary said, "can't call it that anymore, can we?"

"What secret?" another voice smashed the uncanniness that'd thrummed around them. Sheldon, unperturbed by the tear streaks on his mother's face. "And why does it smell like something is burning?"

"Because something was burning," Missy said.

"Oh. So, what's the secret?"

Mary hid her face in her hand. Jean's heart ached.

"Jean's dad used to salsa dance," Missy said.

She was a good liar. Just like her mama before her and her mama's mama before that.

Jean took a bite of overcooked macaroni, and it disintegrated into ashes in her mouth.

She woke up in the middle of that night, not to study her lover, but to the sounds of Mary retching and something splattering against the bottom of a metal bucket. Jean stayed still as night, daring to open her eyes just a little: Mary was bent over on her knees, hair sticking to her forehead, her neck, mumbling intelligible words in between bouts of sickness. Jean didn't move. Her own religious trauma was crippling enough on its own. She couldn't carry someone else's.

Love could be easy. The rest was not.

This suburban domesticity was fragile, about as real as a soap bubble, and Jean was anxiously monitoring the gleam to see when it would pop. There was a gaping hole where the Bible had sat snugly on the shelves, taunting her each time she walked by. She'd forgotten what it was like to love someone so much it hurt, to be consumed by it, ready to give up every piece of your sanity just to be with them. Her roots curled around her, dragging her down. Was she mistaking burning planes for shooting stars again?

Part of her feared Mary would bring it up. Part of her resented Mary for not doing so. Most of her longed to draw the curtains, snuggle up to this incredible, loving partner, and pretend the outside world was a myth. She'd been stripped of the opportunity to witness her grow out of her childlike features into this, this gorgeous woman, and fuck if anyone would stop her from spotting the first wrinkles or laughter lines or grey hairs. Mary was hers. No one was going to break them apart again. She was going to make sure of it.

Jean hadn't spent much time around kids since she'd stopped being one herself overnight. While the occasional couple made arrangements with gay friends, they obviously never brought their babies into the bar, and Jean would almost stop short in wonder on the rare days she'd visit the beach and came eye to eye with a tiny human jamming its fist in its mouth. Humans, after all, didn't appear on Earth as fully grown adults.

As soon as she found out Mary had produced three, she'd started to wonder what that would be like: to cup a rounded belly in your hands and be surprised by a strong foot kicking to let the world know they were alive and already fighting. It was one of the things they'd spoken about during their late-night whisper talks, fingers splayed out on Mary's belly like she could still feel the echoes of the twins. She was too late for them, but maybe, Mary'd said, in a few months, there'd be Mandy and Georgie's baby.

Kids, it turned out, were just like people, but younger. Sheldon, with all his maddening habits and schedules, possessed all of his mother's tendency to obsess and control, though little of her empathy, and more brains than the whole of Medford together. Missy might have inherited the big heart, the blond hair, the blue eyes, but that brazenness was all her, and it was magnificent. Sure, she and Mary had been bold in their own way, kissing and cursing and drinking, yet neither of them had ever dared to stand up and openly reject the rules of society. To barely flinch when you stumbled across your mom and a woman totally making out above a pan of pasta, like, eww, and react like it wasn't completely different to finding your mom and dad like that. This real, living Missy had single-handedly dislodged a breath she'd been holding for far too long now, and Jean loved her for it: new branches on her tree, blossoming with a brand new kind of flower. These kids, she yearned to protect them, help them flourish, like no one had ever done for her.

So, when Missy came home from school with bruised knuckles and a split lip, her heart sped up, beating frantically, and she had to steady her shaking hands before she could collect the first-aid kit and dab at the wounds with rubbing alcohol while Missy gritted her teeth heroically. Missy wasn't meeting her eyes, and she knew, she just knew.

"Don't tell Mom," she said, finally looking up. Her lip was swelling, red and taut, the surrounding skin irritated. "She's so happy. And I can handle myself, see?" She tried to smile, ended up with a pained grimace.

"I don't keep secrets from her, Missy," she said. Her voice cracked.

"I know," the girl whispered, and she inched forward, a little hesitant, and Jean caught her in her arms and kissed the top of her head, like she knew mothers did. It would be jumping the gun to claim she could be all that for Missy, a girl she'd only known for a summer — but it was an instinct. Maybe the same instinct that made Jean's own mother flee and skip town.

She wasn't sure what had brought it on, if it was Missy's split lip, the graffiti at the bowling alley, or just the simple fact that everyone in town was gossiping about the Cooper woman and the Lucas girl. They didn't notice at first. Pastor Rob ordering the occasional Dr. Pepper at the bowling alley bar, asking Mary about her day. Mrs. Difford bringing by a batch of freshly baked peanut butter cookies for the kids (Mandy had been the one to accept those and ate them all) with a smile too big for her face. Pastor Jeff jogging over to help Mary carry in the groceries.

Mary maintained they were just being good, friendly Christians. Jean had too much experience with those to believe it.

She was getting restless, sleeping less, sneaking back to her Uncle's house in the dead of night to continue sorting through the last few mountains of trash. "Stop helping me out so much and do it during the day," Mary'd said, when she'd explained her absences. "I don't like the idea of you out alone in the dark." She'd shivered, and Jeanie stayed in bed until the sun hit the garage windows. Sometimes, she stayed even longer, waiting for the kids to come home from school. She was always waiting now. What for, she had no idea.

That good Christian friendliness herded Pastor Jeff to their front door one afternoon. Jean held her breath, listening intently to the pleasantries exchanged between him and Mary, the overly happy tones. "Rob and I were saying to each other how much we've been missing your company lately," she heard him drawl, "and we would love for you to come have dinner with us this weekend, like old times."

There was a ringing in her ears, a throbbing behind her eyelids. She planted her elbows on her knees, grabbed her head, curls curtaining her face, and rocked. Her exhaustion was making her paranoid: they were nice people. They cared about Mary. Dinner was fine. Absolutely fucking fine.

"Jeanie." Her name, from the best mouth, the sweetest tone, carrying her entire history behind it. The couch shifted under the added weight, and Jean fell against a warm body enveloped in roses and cigarettes, packaged in softness. "Look at me, honey."

And she did, because it was all she ever wanted to do. Mary's smile was real: sad and lovely and loving, blue glittering like the sea. It tugged at her heartstrings, opened up the blood flow. "I miss my cat," she managed through the tears attempting to choke her, because she didn't know how to say: I miss the ocean breeze, the suffocating fumes covering the packed San Fransisco streets, the vibrant colors, the friends who would cheer if I kissed a woman in the middle of the dance floor, the placated heat, the wobbly stairs to my apartment, the window sill where Missy the third would stretch out to soak up the rays of the sun, exposing her soft belly for a few pets.

"We could get a cat," Mary offered, faked enthusiasm, even if her lips were already trembling in truth.

Jean sobbed, and Mary held her, safely tucked away in her arms, dusting her hair with careful kisses. "I think it's time you went home," she said, and then she cried as well.

She didn't recognize him at first. She'd been on the lookout for a lanky dude with arms too long for his body, hiding himself under his baseball cap. So, when the caregiver led them to a shriveled old man in a wheelchair with a head too heavy to hold up and said, "Mr. Dean, your niece is here to see you," she jumped and almost told her she'd shown them to the wrong patient.

"Oh, hello, Uncle Carl," Mary said, with that sympathetic smile of hers that contained healing powers. Jean shook under its force.

The caregiver pulled up two chairs with ominous brown staining in the seating. Mary thanked her, holding her hips to keep her skirt from hiking up as she sat down, and folded one leg over the other. Jean flopped down next to her, concentrating on the smoothness of Mary's ankles.

"Do you remember us, Uncle Carl? It's been a long time."

The nurse had quietly warned them he didn't talk or understand much anymore and he likely wouldn't recognize who they were. That much was apparent now: he barely lifted his head, eyes unfocused and clouded by a grey film, the left one quivering like it was stuck in a fit. His skin was covered in liver spots, hiding in the sagging folds of his wrinkles; when he licked his dry lips, the flesh of his chin, his neck, stretched and hanging, swayed with the movement. He must be old, older than she'd ever realized — maybe even older than her daddy.

"It's Jeanie," she said, leaning forward, touching one of his cold, papery hands.

He looked at her. "Little Jeanie?" he asked, his voice unsteady, more like a grunt. "She and that girlfriend of hers stole my truck this mornin'. Do you know where they've gone?"

She blinked, tears clinging to her lashes — she was too late, twenty years too late. The sole other person who'd known them as they were was drowning in his own web of waning memories. How easy it was, to erase someone's entire existence. She didn't want to be born out of the universe anymore.

"Think they said something about camping out by the Lost Creek," Mary said for her, because she couldn't talk. "I'm sorry, I don't think they'll be back anytime soon."

Uncle Carl growled. "That's alright," he said, lifting one spotted hand from his lap. "Wish they'd just take it and never came back. This town rots you, y'know. Gave me black veins." He pointed at the dark blue protruding web of them, spidering his arms.

Jean squeezed his hand and squeezed Mary's with the other. She saw them clearly now: the two girls visiting their Uncle, stealing the car keys hanging on the hook by the door. He'd never complained, never asked where his truck was. They'd believed the sickly sweet cloud of smoke concealed their thievery. "I'll tell them," she said, and Mary inhaled a shuddery breath.

Something sparked Uncle Carl's recognition: the mist in his eyes dwindled, was replaced by a frantic panic. "Ruthie?" he croaked, hoarse and high, "Ruthie, what are you still doing here? I told you, Ruthie, if you stay, they're gonna find your body by the creek someday."

The long, deep roots buried far down in the suffocating earth wriggled loose and broke free. Did she look like her mother?

"Don't worry, Carl," she said. "I only came back to collect Jeanie."

The sun shone brightly on the most beautiful woman in the whole of Texas, golden hair, glittering blue eyes like no blue you could find elsewhere. Jean had one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting on the scorching metal of the car door.

"I'm sorry we didn't find the box," Mary said, with all that sweet love in the tilt of her head, the slight tremble in her voice.

Jean touched her wrist, barely, a careful pinkie conveying all she wanted to say and had already said. "I think we did," she answered.

She kept watching the sideview mirror until she could finally taste the soothing bittersweetness of a chosen goodbye.