The night teemed with twirling stars. She saw them still, blazing hot red and fiery yellow, when she shut her eyes, drowning in a fitful slumber. She wasn't used to beer anymore; it sloshed around her stomach, tilting the world outside the dusty windshield. It seemed fitting, the sky turning on its axis. God had let a sixteen-year-old girl die in a dang car accident for no reason — the stars should've come crashing down to earth, crying for the loss.

She didn't drink anymore. The Bible forbid it, she would tell everyone. But this, this was the real reason why: her mother's hand on the wheel, the other turning up the volume of the radio, the gritty tunes of a familiar song about busted flats and dirty red bandanas tugging at her walled-off memories. Had it happened, then, a temporary slip-up, forgotten by the next morning's headache?

"Jeanie loves Janis."

Had she said it, broken the seal after so many years of biting her tongue until it bled? And had her mother raised her eyebrows and said, "Jeanie Lucas?" as if there would ever be another Jeanie, "Why you talking about Jeanie Lucas all of a sudden?"

The following day, she'd groped about for a trash can and puked until her throat burned and her eyes watered and her stomach had none to give, and Jeanie was back where she belonged, locked up and half-forgotten.

The soft blue of her daughter's eyes. The fuchsia of her mother's smirking mouth. The fleshy pink of her rose garden, enveloped in the lush greens of vines and stalks and leaves, hues ever-changing when stroked by the rays of the sun or light dapples of rain. The dark brown of Jeanie's curls brushing her freckled shoulders.

Watching the car disappear from view, she expected the brightness to dim, a flame deprived of oxygen, only fed by the occasional gust of wind. Back to normal. Time to box up that part of her, wrap it in old newspapers, and stuff it away deep down in her sock drawer.

"I'm sorry, Mary," Mandy said, like she really meant it.

Last time, she had wished above anything for someone, anyone, to acknowledge her bleeding heart. Her mother had briefly supported her and taken her out on a girl's night, but how could she have helped when she didn't even know what Jeanie had been to her? Before long, her siblings had commandeered her parents' attention again, and Mary'd started seeking solace in college bars.

Now, she was seen, and she felt like her skin was spun from glass, and all she longed to do was hide in a closet.

"Nothing to do about it," she said, with a smile she couldn't develop. "It's God's will."

The words tasted bitter, false, like they warned her to spit out the lie and rinse her mouth. She turned around, willing her hands to stop shaking, desperate to hole herself up in the garage — maybe there, she could hold onto Jeanie a little longer.

"I knew it."

The feelings hadn't left yet: Missy's tone slid ice-cold down her spine, the pierced rage of her squinting eyes knocked the wind out of her. That young girl, standing there with her arms wrapped around her shivering body, a long tear streak wetting her cheek, like a cruel echo of the past.

"Everything's just going back to the way it was now, won't it?" she asked, eyes begging for the right answer, her voice breaking with Mary's heart. She sniffled and stared at her mother, waiting.

"Why don't we go inside?" Mary said, because it was easier to wield her parental shield than to open herself to the pain.

Missy didn't move, her face contorting, her shoulders convulsing in a full-body sob. "Why couldn't we just go with her?"

Mary couldn't breathe. She never much liked the mirrors motherhood held up to her. How dare it steal her misery and reflect it upon the kid she'd created?

"She lives in California, Missy. Above a bar."

"So, what? I don't care. I want to live in California."

"Yeah, well, we don't all get what we want in life."

It was the wrong thing to say, of course — she regretted it as soon as it left her lips and smacked into Missy's face like a brick. "I like you better when Jean's around," she cried, and she spun around, hair flying after her, and ran into the house.

The slam of a door startled Mary from her temporary shock. She'd been so wrapped up in her own loss that she hadn't even stopped to consider other people had also come to love Jeanie.

Mandy put a hand on her shoulder. "Let's go inside," she said quietly, and the soft press on her back finally made her come undone. She liked herself better with Jeanie, too.

Jeanie hadn't left the garage, just like she'd hoped: a small red box lay waiting on her pillow, a heart-shaped key on the one beside it. She turned the lock with trembling fingers, the click bouncing off the walls as the lid sprang open. The insides were decorated with peeling hearts and sparkle stickers, and it was filled to the brim with a stack of letters, a new Post-it note on top:

Thank you for keeping this part of me safe, and for giving it back.

Taking care to dry her tears before they could stain the precious paper, she read, and read, and read.

The bed was almost entirely covered by lined sheets by the time the sun had dropped lower than the high windows, scribbled lines of love faded by time, pictures of two girls cuddled up, kissing each other's cheek — never on the lips. They hadn't trusted the developer not to look.

Mary retrieved the shoebox from the shelves above her head, gathered the letters, and put them away. Neatly packed up again. She stared at the key, warm in the palm of her hand.

Maybe not everything had to go back to the way it was.

She selected a few photos, some innocent, some less, and left the garage with them in hand. Her heart banging in her chest, she knocked on Missy's door.

The white strip that had circled her ring finger since she'd left her wedding ring on the countertop, just out of reach of its other half, had first turned pink and then blended in with the rest of her skin. By the time she'd signed the papers, with a tremble in her core and a stoic set of her pen, as not to upset Jeanie, all the visible evidence of the hard-won marriage that'd collapsed like the houses of cards the kids used to take hours building had vanished. It was that bare hand that knocked on the Difford's door, the other balancing a pie dish covered in aluminum foil — the hand that'd held Jeanie's, stroked her hair, her belly, other places she shouldn't think about when she was about to have dinner with two pastors.

The door swung open, and Pastor Jeff welcomed her with a beaming smile and a "Mary!", like they were casual friends who hadn't seen each other in a year. She didn't trust herself to speak, worried she would either puke or spill something like: I went down on a woman more than once, but the weather is mighty fine, ain't it? So, she held her tongue and tried to match the smile.

She greeted Robin, his wife, and pushed away the strange test she'd caught herself performing frequently lately. Robin was an attractive woman, no doubt—meticulous eyebrows, shiny blonde hair, perfectly made-up face—but it was only Jeanie she wanted to kiss, right? Jeanie, her exception.

Robin took painstaking precautions not to touch her when she handed the pie over, like whatever Jeanie had was contagious, and Mary tried to hold onto her laugh. She settled next to Rob, who was already there, the only one whose greeting felt genuine, and wondered then: did they think Mary had it too, what Jeanie had? Would they have invited her to dinner if they did?

She made polite small talk, tried to recover the married Christian mother version of herself, not the woman who told her kids to go rent a movie so she could fool around with her girlfriend on a mattress on the floor, and felt her slip through the cracks between each sip of her water and bite of potato. Rob was too close to her, elbows touching each other when they cut their steak, and she flushed with the idea that she was sullying a man of God with a body that'd performed unspeakable acts and relished in them.

"Now, Mary," Pastor Jeff began, folding his hands above the table, pie crumbs littering his shirt, "we were all very sorry to hear Jean left to go home. We all know how close the two of you are. That must've been hard."

Next to her, Rob held his fork suspended in mid-air, whipped cream dripping from it. Her neck burned: she had expected this, of course, had been warned by Jeanie herself. Use them, she'd said, pretend it was me. Become their friend, and most will go back to how it was before. You deserve a quiet life.

She dabbed her mouth with her napkin, left a lipstick stain. "Thank you, that's kind of you," she heard herself say. "We all miss her a lot, but it was for the best."

This town would have killed her, she'd sobbed into Georgie's arms as he patted her back, it's for the best. Now she had much more time for him and the mother of her grandbaby, to tell them not to get married, not if they weren't sure, not when life was so incredibly short.

"I think we can all agree on that," Robin said, her gaze shifting furtively. Something about her tone bothered Mary.

Pastor Jeff shot his wife a look, the practiced expression of benevolence flailing momentarily. "I, for one, would've loved it if she'd stayed, and we could've helped her reconcile with the Big Guy. Weren't we talking about that, Rob? Such a lovely woman, it's a shame."

Rob nodded, stuffing his mouth with a big piece of pie; some of it broke off and fell back onto his plate.

This was the part where she should sigh, agree, and lament what a waste it was. Instead, the leftover sweetness of apple in her mouth turned bitter, and she sipped her glass. "I think we could all learn a lot from her, actually," she said, and underneath the table, her knees shook. "She never judged me or my son, unlike others in this town. She was just there for us, always."

Silence descended upon the table, pregnant with tension. She ignored the looks Jeff and Rob were exchanging, the eternal grin on Jeff's face morphing into a grimace.

Rob swallowed his mouthful of pie. A drop of whipped cream clung to his mustache. "I mean, that's true. He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her."

"Exactly," Jeff said, chuckling nervously. "Hardly anyone is truly without sin. The poor creature deserves our compassion. Especially considering she never had a mother to model after." He pointed his fork at her, like he was saying something profound, like this conversation wasn't raising the hairs on the back of her neck. The suggestion that Jeanie had an unforgivable flaw dragged the undercooked potatoes back up her throat, and yet, hadn't she been convinced she could save Jeanie herself not long ago?

"I can tell you she didn't model after her father either," she said — she couldn't help it. She remembered the fear in Jeanie's eyes, the panic attack, and she couldn't let any man of God talk about her like this, as if they hadn't harmed her enough by now. "That man had horns holding up his halo. Ugly as get-all." She shuddered, picturing the cold glint in his irises, the snap of his belt, the charming smile he conjured up for outsiders. Jeanie had been the sweetest, most precious girl, failed by all the adults around her. As a mother now, it hurt even more than it did then. Jeanie had shrugged when she'd said that. Different times, Mare. And I had you.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Mary," Jeff said, and should she feel comforted by that exaggerated display of pity? "And that's exactly why Jeanie deserves our compassion, regardless of her homosexual problem."

Her homosexual problem. To describe it like a persistent, itchy rash or a nicotine addiction, a degrading affliction that could be cured with the right medicine and a strong will. She'd thought of it like that for so long, hiding her medicine in a brown paper bag, hoping no one had caught a glimpse of the contents. So much shame — she'd bathed in it, drowned in it, until she'd driven it out with hymns and bible verses. It'd been the only explanation for the course her life had taken, the teen pregnancy, the hasty marriage, the isolation from her best friend.

When Jeanie kissed her, her heart glowed. When Jeanie called her baby, she melted. When Jeanie confided in her, she felt she could carry all her issues on her back for her, no matter the weight. When Jeanie made love to her — that was all it was, an abundance of love poured into every touch.

How could a problem present itself in such a sweet package?

She recalled her fantasies of Jeanie as her neighbor, raising their respective kids together — Jeanie's skepticism that'd burst the vision with a straightforward question. She knew now that Jeanie had been right: it wouldn't have been nice. It would've driven them crazier than a five-­pound fruitcake. She'd already had a jealous streak when it came to George; she was scared to imagine what would've been unleashed if she'd had to grit her teeth and watch some piddling man call Jeanie honey.

Mary was sure she was the biggest homosexual problem allowed to freely gallivant about town.

"I've seen for myself that compassion isn't the congregation's strong suit," she blurted out, and it shut up not only the company but herself, too. She could hardly believe it: reeling rage rendered her incapable of smiling agreeably, lips tightly closed, muscles tenser than the air. Where was her shame, the bucketloads she'd collected over the years?

"Ain't that the truth!" Pastor Jeff called out then, with a slap of the table and his signature grin, like he was gathering ideas for his Sunday speech. Like he hadn't been among the ones dropping her faster than a stone from a water tower. "You raise some excellent points. Like I said, hardly anyone is without sin. We'd do well to remember that. Because what matters most to Jesus? What we do with it. Amen to that." He lifted his glass in an awkward toast, then hastily put it to his mouth when no one moved to respond.

Robin rubbed her brow with two fingers. Rob swallowed an overly large apple slice and coughed.

Funny, wasn't it, how Pastor Jeff had married a female namesake of his colleague. I wonder, Jeanie had said, with that tantalizing smirk of hers, if our good Pastor ever calls her Rob when they're in bed together. Of course, Mary had blushed fiercely and scolded her, scandalized, but now it flashed through her mind, and miraculously, she laughed. She couldn't stop it. She almost expected someone to close the curtains and point out the hypocrisy of this farce. How did she live in this all those years? Was everyone just pretending, comparing their sins to other's, hoping theirs were greater than their own? Pastor Jeff, whose wife had left left and divorced him. Rob, who'd openly admitted to a wild past, cigarette between his lips, a pretty young thing following him around the bowling alley. And heaven knew what perfect Mrs. Difford was hiding? Mary had appeared to have it all together once.

She'd been sure beforehand that she could do this. That she could find a way to reconnect with her people and renegotiate her relationship with God. Acknowledge her sins and make peace with the worst of them. Navigate a path forward.

She'd expected Jeanie to reside in her heart. She hadn't counted on Jeanie's presence in her head.

Two young girls loving each other is never a sin, Mare. And if it is, then I don't think I like your God very much.

She stood up from her chair, smoothed the fabric of her pristine dress, and drew a big breath. Pastor Jeff's shoulders deflated, his wife raised her eyebrows. She thanked them for the meal and offered to help wash up.

"Let me walk you home," Rob said, already following her. She didn't particularly want him to: her legs were still shaky, about to snap in half, but it was only a short distance.

She turned around under the porch light. He was studying her, his hands in his pockets, sleeves pushed up to his elbows.

"If you're going to condemn me, please be quick about it. I'd like to catch the late-night news." She managed her usual steady tone, yet she didn't know how long she would be able to maintain it, the empty pie dish suddenly heavy in her grip.

He nodded, a tiny smile gracing his face. "I'm not going to condemn you, Mary. I think you're very brave."

Her skin was made of glass again. Could he see her inner workings, her pounding heart, and who it beat for?

"You seem... transformed." He said it like he was testing the words, observing how they would land. She knew Jeanie would preach caution, would say it wasn't real, it was what they did — but she had never found solace in God. Mary still believed.

She released a deep, long sigh that'd refused to leave her lungs earlier. Her feet found steady ground. "I feel reborn," she admitted, knowing then that she couldn't go back to how it had been, even if she wanted to.

Back in her kitchen, her mother was shuffling a deck of cards, her eyes following Mary as she wetted the tip of her finger and dealt to Georgie and Mandy. "How was dinner with the Jean haters?" she asked, lazily arranging her own hand.

She settled the dish on the counter. "Y'know, the potatoes were a little undercooked."

Her mother smirked.

The first three times, she only walked past. Just the consideration drilled stabs of guilt in her stomach, stabs she would try to pray away with her knees driven in the earth of her garden. How did someone talk to God, though, when she had been leading the life she was living, when she was questioning his Word like this? Jeanie's kisses had planted a seed, and no matter what she did, she couldn't stop it from burgeoning.

The fourth time, a throng of students emerged from both sides of the hallway, and she would either have to weave through them or finally go in. She went with the latter.

She tried to even out her breathing. If anyone asked, she was here to check out a book for her son: Understanding Physics by one Isaac Asimov, a title she'd spotted on Sheldon's shelves while vacuuming. She held onto the handles of her bag, arranged her face into a mildly interested expression, and started meandering through the endless aisles of bookcases, the carpet underneath her feet muffling her nerves. Every second, she expected the librarian to charge at her, interrogate her about what she was doing. When she glanced over her shoulder, the woman was still at her desk, talking to someone on the phone.

The section she'd been looking for was hidden in the back with the history books, like the University was too ashamed to stock them closer to the science books. Most titles were either full of words she didn't understand or so broad and vague that she had no idea what they were about. She picked one up at random, opened it to the introduction, and attempted to read the first paragraph. Her high school diploma hadn't prepared her to digest a text like this. Soon, she left with her throat burning and her head down.

She was trying to be brave, like Rob had told her she was. She'd considered asking him, finally voicing the doubts she'd been carrying inside her since she'd bared her skin to Jeanie — but how could she burden him with that? He wasn't stupid either; he would figure out why these thoughts were plaguing her. She didn't know what she found scarier: the idea of him condemning her or encouraging her.

That left her one other option.

"Shelly," she said, "can I ask you about something?"

He'd been staring straight ahead for a while, no doubt lost in some complex theory she couldn't fathom. Now he blinked, a little surprised. "That depends. Is it about Scotch tape?"

"No."

"Then go ahead."

The crucifix lay heavy on the front of her dress, rising and falling in rhythm with her breathing. Part of her wished to rip the chain from her neck and hurl it out the window. Pretend it never existed. Pretend the guilt wouldn't consume her, burrow itself in every caveat between her bones, fill up her rib cage.

"You read the Bible, right?"

"Yes, in a matter of speaking. By the way, you're going over the speed limit."

She was. She had to slow down: her car, her mind, her heart rate. "I wanted to ask you," she continued a moment later, back on a long stretch of empty road, "what do you think it says about... people like Jeanie?"

He frowned, and for a moment, her stomach twisted in fear. "Bar owners?" he said then, and she almost laughed. "Because the concept of bars as they exist nowadays —"

"Not bar owners," she interrupted, before she'd lose this spark of courage. "Homosexuals. What does it say about... that?"

"Oh, right."

He seemed to be considering it. Maybe this would be one of those rare instances in which he had to admit he didn't know, and she could forget this uncomfortable conversation and the guilt attached to it.

"Well, I suppose it depends. Which translation are we talking about?"

"They all differ that much?"

"Naturally. Or there wouldn't have been any need for new translations."

"So, which is the best one?"

Sheldon looked at her. "Why are you asking me? You're the one who believes in the stories."

She bit her tongue. Counted to ten. She'd long made peace with the fact her son would never accept Jesus as his Lord and Saviour and had always hoped he would grow up to invent something important, like the cure for cancer, so he might still be admitted to heaven. She'd never blamed herself for his atheism, but maybe she should, maybe she'd sentenced him to hell simply by being his mother, with her homosexual problem.

"Which is the most accurate?" she rephrased, a question that was undoubtedly blasphemous in itself.

"Probably the original. But my Greek is a little rusty. And don't get me started on my Hebrew and ancient Aramaic."

A few months ago, the world was black and white, a clear divide between good and evil. It was the easiest way to navigate life, to get out of bed and face the day ahead. She was starting to remember, to grudgingly accept, that humanity resided in the in-between: the play of dark and light creating shadows, ever-changing, never sure.

"Fun fact: the term homosexual wasn't coined until the late nineteenth century. Yet it's used in some bible translations."

He was telling it like he told any of his science facts, like it was some light topic for casual conversation, instead of what it was: the thing that tilted the sky on its axis, this time without the aid of alcohol.

She turned left, the longer way home. "Tell me more about that," she said, and it felt like embracing the shadows inside her.

One afternoon, Rob dropped by the bowling alley and asked if she would go for coffee with him. The dark and light fought with each other — she couldn't do this to him, could she, sit across from him and talk and laugh with the same lips that'd traced another woman's body from head to toe, like dreams from a previous life? She couldn't, and yet, she did. She was amazed that he couldn't see it on her, like it wasn't tattooed on her skin, her feelings for Jeanie so ever-present that not a second went by when she wasn't thinking about her. He had no idea, did he, that after he'd walked her to her car, she'd drive to the nearest payphone and dial the San Francisco 415 number she'd learned by heart somewhere between Jeanie going home and now. That that same heart rejoiced whenever she heard that familiar voice greet her with a "Hey, baby." That she lay awake in bed while the crickets chirped and pictured the day Sheldon and Missy would turn eighteen, envisioning an empty house, a choice.

He couldn't know, because she seemed to be lying to someone no matter what she did. Lord, was she tired of lying.

So, when she went around her mom's house to give her the boxed-up piece of leftover pumpkin pie from the Sweet Pea cafe, she decided to stop. She wasn't sure when these meetings with a friendly man whose company she enjoyed had turned into something that made his eyes light up whenever she was near, she really wasn't — they were supposed to be friends, after all — but it was eating at her so much that she hadn't even been able to cut into her dessert. She wasn't in love with him. She'd started to believe she might not even be capable of it.

"Mary," her mother said, opening the box and getting herself a fork, "what are you doing with him?"

It was a question that'd lain on her tongue for weeks now. Mary had seen it before and deftly ignored it, not ready to face the truth. How much did her mother know? How much did she want to tell her?

She was only sure of one thing: no more lies.

She folded her arms across her chest. Sighed. Leaned against the refrigerator like a moody teenager. "I'm using him to get my life back," she spilled, her heart in her throat.

For a few silent seconds, her mother stared at her, unmoving. The next moment, she laughed: one of her throaty cackles that betrayed years of smoking. "That right? Doesn't really sound like you. You take more after me than you think, you know."

"I know."

Her stomach growled, relieved that she'd finally been truthful to someone. Without asking, her mother handed her another fork, and together, they dug in.

"Remember Janis Joplin?"

"Oh, Lord."

"I hadn't thought about your little girlfriend for years, and suddenly, you were talking about her like she'd never been gone."

Mary'd always expected this conversation to be held amid sobs and tears and wallows, slumping to the floor in desperation. Not in the quaint glow of her mother's kitchen, the clock ticking happily like it always had, only drowned out by their forks scraping the bottom of the cardboard box. Not with a ball of excitement jumping around her stomach, almost pleasantly. She was going to talk about her Jeanie. To her mother. Oh, my goodness.

"You must have suspected, when we were kids," she found herself saying, as if she was craving the recognition, as if they hadn't always painstakingly tried to hide it.

Her mother raised her eyebrows. "Hardly a suspicion. You were running after that girl all moon-eyed. I thought it was just a phase. What woman hasn't thought about it?"

It was a shock to the system: that not only had her mother known, she was no stranger to the allure itself. She wondered if she should tell her what Jeanie had told her, that no, not all women have entertained the thought, but her tongue was sticky, and she couldn't move her lips, her stomach wriggling with the hundreds of pie crumbs she'd sent there.

"Then you went and got yourself knocked up by that big idiot."

"You could've said something," she blurted out, forcing the words through her blocked-up throat. How different everything could've been if she'd known her mother wouldn't judge her and would still love her. What a different life they could've led.

"Hey, I tried. Told you a million times you shouldn't marry him. But you'd made up your mind." She seemed to consider something, then added: "And there was your dad."

Dad. A man with a soft heart, yet a stickler for the rules, his own and the ones set out by the Bible. How proud he'd been when she'd decided to become born again, to accept Jesus into her heart. He'd even told her that day, the first and only time he'd said the words out loud.

"Thank the Lord he isn't here to find out the truth."

It was the deadpan look her mother shot her that drained the strength from her legs, even before she said it. A silent warning of bad news, spinning the world on its head once again.

"You really think Mr Lucas didn't tell him?"

She clutched her necklace. "Dad knew?"

"Mm-hm, pretty sure he did. Ain't never told me, though."

The best-kept secret of Medford had not been kept that well after all. She swallowed down the hurt, tried to push away the disappointed thunder her father would unleash whenever she'd come home drunk — had they been laced with the horrific possibility his daughter might have been out kissing girls in abandoned parking lots?

"I remember," she said, and her voice was shaking, "when I turned out to be pregnant. I thought he'd be angrier."

"Yeah. Think part of him was relieved."

"Were you?"

It was out before she could help herself: she was twelve years old again, desperately seeking her mother's attention and approval. Maybe, if her mom was okay with it, she could be okay with it.

"Hell no! I thought you went and ruined your life."

Suddenly, she found that in a tiny corner of her mind, she did blame her mother. Seventeen was so young. She'd needed protection, needed someone to tell her she couldn't go out, couldn't drink, couldn't smoke. Not someone who encouraged her behind her husband's back.

"Y'know, Ma, some of us actually liked raising our children." She threw down her fork. It clattered on the counter.

"Yeah, and some of us liked being a person next to being a mother."

She met her mother's gaze, hawkish and ready to fight. Neither of them looked away; neither could, stuck on each other like this was their first meeting ever. Her spirit, her spunk—she'd inherited it from her mom, there was no doubt.

"Don't act like you don't regret anything about throwing yourself into raising those kids," her mother broke the silence. Her long earrings dangled in the pattern of her words. "Think you've denied yourself enough for a lifetime, don't you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know well enough what I mean. It takes gumption to live like Jean, Mary."

"And you reckoned I ain't had it?"

"Are you saying you do? 'Cause here we are, honey, twenty years later, and you're still wearing that necklace, and you still haven't plucked up the courage to confess to Jean how you feel about her."

At first, Mary thought it was a trick, that her mother was trying to draw her out and stir some of that gumption in her. But her mother didn't budge, just kept nibbling from her fork, no glint in her eyes — she had no clue. Master concealers, they'd been, so much so that she'd fooled the very person who'd birthed her.

She longed, then, to be known.

"Ma," she said, "I've been sleeping with Jeanie since well before I got my driver's permit."

The sweetest vindication, to witness her mother lower her fork, stop chewing, for once stunned into complete silence. She was hungry for it, yearned for more, to prove to her that she did have that gumption, oceans of it, that she'd been brave enough to choose love. That there was more to her than just the outer layers, that she was fun, that she was, in fact, a woman, her own person.

"We were thirteen when we kissed for the first time, maybe even younger," she continued, everything tumbling out like she couldn't contain it anymore, like confessing to one thing had punched a hole in the wall, and there was no patching it up. "I knew I loved her when I was sixteen, and I told her so. I kissed her again just a few months ago, right after George left. We shared a bed every night after. I told her I loved her again and again, because if anyone needs to hear it, it's Jeanie." She breathed out a giant bubble of relief that'd clogged her chest. "So, tell me again, I don't have the gumption."

"You're shitting me."

"I've got letters. I've got pictures. I could call her right now and have her tell you."

She could. Before Jeanie left, they'd agreed that they wouldn't contact each other for a while to give themselves time to heal, and she'd broken that deal not a week in. To know where Jeanie was and not talk to her—that was unbearable. She was terrified that if she didn't remind Jeanie of her existence, she would fall in love with some other woman—one who lived in California, didn't believe in God, and had the gumption to be out and proud.

Her mother grabbed onto the counter and then, as if in a trance, shuffled to her couch. There, she fell back into the cushions and gaped at the ceiling.

Mary followed her, sat down in the armchair, and imagined her dad next to her mother, thrown into the first throes of a heart attack. His change in behavior, in the way he expressed his love, had it been brought on by Mr Lucas then? Had he known what Mr Lucas was planning to do to Jeanie? She would never know, and maybe that was for the best. Had he still been alive, she doubted she would've ever reconnected with Jeanie.

"I thought you were suffering in silence," her mother said then, words muffled by the hands she'd covered her face with. "I thought that's why she left, because it wasn't going anywhere."

"She left because of this town."

She removed her hands, straightened up, and stared at her, her bright eyeshadow and lipstick smudged. "It's like I don't know you at all."

"That's alright. I'm still getting to know myself."

That elicited a reluctant grin from her mother, one that evolved into a snort. "Ah, that's why Sheldon thinks you're menopausal. You were finally getting some good sex."

"Ma!"

She'd played through so many scenarios in her head during her life, imagining tears, shouting, silent acceptance, shock, and heart attacks—never, not once, had she predicted her mom would be making a dirty joke, like it was nothing, like they could've been discussing a secret boyfriend. Maybe, though, this was the response she would've hoped for if she had allowed herself the optimism.

"Does that... does that mean you're alright with it?" She fingered her necklace, felt her heartbeat underneath, heavy and fast.

Her mother smiled a tender smile, one of those she didn't give out easily, one that filled you with warmth and safety. She leaned over, took one of her hands, and squeezed it. "Mary," she said, "you're my daughter, and I love you. I don't care jack shit who you roll around the hay with, as long as you're happy. And I haven't seen you as happy in years as when she came back."

She was tired of crying. Instead, she stayed like that, basking in her mother's love and acceptance, the brightest glow she wanted to carry with her always. For the first time since she'd spotted a plane tumbling from the sky, she felt truly lucky.

"Could you see me there," she asked, after a while, a little girl seeking her mom's encouragement, "in California?"

Her mother shrugged. "At a lesbian bar? No."

Was it silly, that she deflated under that answer, that she had hoped, just for a moment, that her mother would supply her with the courage she needed, free her of her responsibilities towards her family?

"But," she added, "I also thought you'd never as much as kissed Jean, so what do I know?"

The car was scorching hot, even with the windows down. She sipped from her water bottle, one hand on the wheel, nothing but road and desert stretching before her. She'd been driving for hours by then, and she could keep going for hours more, complete the whole journey in one day by sheer willpower.

She didn't know what she would find in California. She didn't know if she could make a home there, exist in a space where other women loved women. But she did know she couldn't continue in the way it had been in Texas.

Missy was pushing the buttons on the radio, crackling noises scratching the air, looking for some music. They'd talked a lot, their throats dry with dust, and now that all hopes and fears were aired, they'd slowed down into this comfortable silence.

Out of the static, a clear voice rose from the speakers, and Missy waited to see if she'd stumbled across something cool enough for their new West Coast life. "And now folks, as requested by one of our listeners, get ready to enjoy some R.E.M.!"

Missy smiled and turned up the volume.

"Oh, life, it's bigger, it's bigger than you..."