Jeanie Lucas had been kept at the back of her mind for a full eighteen years.

She'd never even dared to wonder what it'd be like to bring her back to the forefront. Sure, Mary couldn't deny the girl hadn't shown up in her thoughts every now and then. Screaming in a hospital bed while nurses fussed over her fainted boyfriend-just-turned-husband, her mother still stuck in traffic. When her daughter Missy first smiled at her, and she'd never seen anything more precious. Crying at her father's bedside as he released his final breath, ready to join Jesus. Curled up, hugging a blanket, after she lost what would've been her fourth child. And more recently, when it'd turned out that she'd failed to raise her eldest son and she was going to be a grandmother.

Now, it seemed Jeanie was impossible to escape. She was in the whispers at the convenience store, where the mothers converged with the cashiers to discuss the contents of her shopping cart (wine, pasta, and chocolate, apparently). She was on every corner, in the women crossing the street, brown, curly hair bouncing after them. She was in the bar at the bowling alley, customers loudly discussing her history while Mary willed her hands to stop shaking so she could pour herself coffee.

Jeanie was like a ghost following her around town, and as long as she didn't go looking for her, she'd remain nothing but a tall tale. Mary had seen heaps of garbage bags lining the Dean's driveway, more of them every day, and she figured it wouldn't be long till the house was empty and its temporary occupant would leave again.

"I saw that lady Jeanie today," Missy said one evening, mashing up her potatoes. Just like that, the ghost had been invited into her very own house.

Mary cut off a piece of her sausage, forceful enough that her youngest son, Sheldon, winced as her knife touched her plate. She ignored him; she needed all her attention to survive the coming conversation.

Georgie, who'd been twirling his fork, head cast down, suddenly perked up. "Dang," he said, "I've wanted to be the one to meet her first. Ain't never seen a real one. She pretty? — Ouch, Meemaw."

He'd received a well-placed slap on the back of his hand from Connie, Mary's mother. Though Connie lived across the street in the house Mary'd grown up in, the house Jeanie had been a frequent visitor of, she kept the family company more often than not.

"You deserved that," her mother said. "It's not like the girls in your magazines, you idiot."

"Seen a real what?" Missy asked.

"A d—" Georgie started to say, but Connie interrupted him.

"A lesbian," she corrected, drawing the word out. Her gaze shifted to Mary, a tiny smirk playing around her fuchsia-painted lips.

Missy frowned and turned to her twin brother, who, until then, hadn't paid much attention to the gossiping. "What's a lesbian?" she asked him, and Mary sucked in a breath. At that age, fourteen, she hadn't even heard of that term, much less uttered it out loud like it was nothing.

As intelligent as Sheldon was, taking college classes at his young age, this was something she hoped her innocent boy didn't know — shouldn't know. But: "It's a female who is exclusively sexually and romantically attracted to other females," he said, and her fist curled tightly around her fork.

She could barely breathe. All this time, she'd vaguely pretended it wasn't true; that Jeanie had gone on to marry a nice man like she had, and that the past had meant nothing, just two silly girls being the best of friends — but if Jeanie did — if she was — for real — then...

"Stop it, kids. You're giving your mother a stroke."

That might've been the first helpful thing George had said in ages, and she found she could move again, though her cheeks burned red. She quickly put her fork down, afraid to reveal her trembling hands.

"Thank you, George," she managed to say. "Missy, you stay away from her, alright? I don't want any of you near her, understood?"

Her mother snorted into her beer. "Bit rich coming from someone who used to sleep in the same bed with her."

"Ma!"

"I'm just saying, Mary," her mother continued, holding up her hands, "it didn't turn you queer, so I don't see the harm in Missy just talking to the woman. I was very fond of that girl, y'know."

It didn't turn her queer. It didn't. She had a husband and kids. She was going to be a grandmother. She'd ended up fine. Well, normal, at least.

"You slept in one bed with a lesbian?" Georgie's eyes almost fell out of his skull. His weren't the only ones. George had a crease in his forehead, Missy's lips formed a perfect 'o', and even Sheldon regarded her with stunned interest.

Mary avoided their gazes, smoothing a non-existent crease in the tablecloth. "We were little girls," she said, silently warning her mother not to object. It wasn't exactly true: they'd been young, yes, in the beginning, though at fifteen, they probably should've known better. "And that's that. Now eat your peas."

"But—"

"Eat your peas, Missy."

"Your mother's right." Another thing her husband hadn't said in a while. "I've heard some people have been real awful to that woman. They say someone shoved dog poo through her mailbox. Don't want to get caught up in all that."

"They have?"

She couldn't help it. It was instinctual, like the times she'd distracted Officer Murray by pretending to have lost her cat so Jeanie could escape the cabin they'd broken into or when Jeanie's daddy had attempted to beat her raw with his broomstick and Mary had knocked him out with the Bible.

She felt her mother's eyes studying her. Though part of her had always wondered how much she'd known about her daughter and daughter's best friend, she didn't really want to find out.

Especially not in front of her family. Especially not in front of her husband, who didn't need that ammunition now that they could barely get through the day without arguing.

"Yeah, it was a whole thing," he said. "Apparently, the woman complained to Pastor Jeff about it."

Her hands had finally ceased trembling. Mary eyed the dinner she'd prepared, suddenly doubting if she could stuff even one bite down her throat. "Well, good for her," she said. "Just because we don't approve of someone's lifestyle doesn't mean we should take it upon ourselves to punish them for it."

That elicited a deep sigh from Georgie. "You're just saying that because of me, right?"

"We're done talking about this. Shelly, tell your dad about that interesting class you had today."

But she couldn't listen to him. Not when her mind was picturing a grown Jeanie cleaning out the rusted mailbox at the beginning of the Dean's drive, shaking her big head of curls in disgust. Just like that, Jeanie Lucas was out of the back and moved to a permanent place at the front, exactly like all those years ago.