It was suffocating in the room, the air hot from Jo leaving the windows open. The humidity had reached record levels that week, but Jo couldn't convince herself to get out of bed. Zoe wasn't up, so she saw no reason that she should be. Just being in bed might have been bearable, but Jo had the blanket and pillows in the nest she had been spending her nights and late mornings.

The blanket still smelled a little bit like him, as did the t-shirt she slept in.

Most days she tried to sleep long past dawn, though that was her most productive time of day, unless she was painting. She wished she could blame her inability to get out of bed on staying up late with paint and wine and exorcised feelings. Coloring the tumult of her belly into art. That wasn't happening. Her canvasses were fallow. When she was able to get a palette going, she was once again contemplating shades of green, and now her lady was hiding from her too.

She was hiding from herself.

Mostly, Jo avoided sunrise, would miss daylight totally not for her toddler. Zoe was her light, they played, and her suggested dance parties - to shake off "mommy's sad face"- were the only time Jo found herself really smiling.

She was also smiling on the phone. Ethan was calling again. A lot. She'd had more FaceTime calls from him and Sean while they prepped for their soon to be trip than she could count. It was like neither of them had left the country before.

Jo supposed that was true. They had both been abroad, but not without their mums to plan and prep and pack. The calls were substituting. They were also keeping Jo on track.

Those calls were her daily meeting. Ethan her unwitting sponsor.

Ethan's face, the opposite of how it had looked the last time he was home, kept her on her phone, away from her message app, and away from Harry's doorstep.

She hadn't even been over to drop off his things. That was at least why she still had t-shirts with his smell on him. She would just switch them every couple days.

The last time they were apart, she wanted it to be forever for good reasons, for his future and him being able to get everything he wanted. Now they were apart, well because they should have never been together.

The part that broke her inside was that they had been. To have that once in a lifetime feeling for someone so perfectly wrong for her, it was a cruel twist of fate. She was knotted up over it. Bent in two and around like a spoon near a fire. Jo knew he had kept things from her, and she'd forgiven him for it. His reasoning made sense, she gave him that. However, things didn't stay dead in the boneyard they were built on, her feelings, for one, just kept coming up, decayed with the passage of the last two weeks. They were animated though, and the had joined the ghosts in her house. Echoes of Harry that she cultivated then loathed and avoided, but could not shoot down.

It should have given her something to paint about, but it mostly gave her heartache and mixed feelings. Empty canvases, fallow heart. Baby giggles were good cures for sadness. Zoe as distraction was wonderful, however, she slept more than Jo, always, but especially now. And rather than avoiding the things that made her restless, she was wallowing in them.

Zoe also wasn't that great to talk to. Precocious as she was, it would have been nice to talk to an adult. Like when Zoe asked for Harry, or brought over their couples unicorns and told her she "did it wrong, Harry does it like this." So Jo found herself wiping tears in the bathroom, or the pantry. Hiding now, not eating, she wasn't eating.

Her guilt was her daily diet. It kept her away from Harry. When she wanted to talk to him, she called Ethan and listened to him happily chatter about Sean. It was another distraction, but she once again wasn't talking to an adult about her feelings. And Ethan avoided the subject like an alcoholic avoided bars. They were both recovering addicts it seemed.

And she never under any circumstances read the letter. Letters now.

They sat deep in her bedside table buried deep beneath her novels and night clothes. Way deeper than her vibrator. She didn't even bother to cover that up anymore. Jo was amazed that the other things Harry woke up in her had gone back to sleep, her confidence, sense of worth, and inspiration. The sex drive, which only revved it's engine every six months before that bathroom eye contact climax, was now running so hard and on empty at the same time. She was in the fast lane without a driver.

It sucked.

It compounded her guilt. Because Harry was the face she saw and the loving she felt when her engine turned on and couldn't be quieted, needed to air out the tires and punch the gas.

But she had stayed away.  Even after the letter.

Harry knew what he was doing. The first letter had brought her running. And he seemed to have figured out she had blocked him, his number and on Instagram. He'd also been respectful enough to stay off her doorstep.

She left the letter in the drawer. Jo didn't lay eyes on it after the first read.

It was emblazoned on her brain afterwards anyway.

Dearest Jo,

I call you Jo because I think you do not want to be my baby.

I am however your lover, yours. I know that you want to say goodbye, and selfishly, I hope it is as hard for you, as grey and dull, to be apart, as it is for me.

Not because I want you in pain, but that I want you with me.

This is not how I feel on my good days, the ones where I see the sun and happily remember it dancing over your skin, that lucky light. The gleam of your teeth when you smile. On those days, I hope you have forgotten me already, though I'll never forget you.

On my bad days, which are more numerous due to proximity, I stay in bed and bury my face in your pillow. Envy that we slept at your place more. Hope you haven't washed your sheets. I've slept on canvasses a lot of nights. The ones of you, in shades of strawberry and ballet pink.

Jo, baby, please! I'm sorry, for not telling, or for chasing, for having, but not for needing.

We needed each other, like breath, and bone. To keep upright and moving forward.

You are in my bones. I in yours.

Please love me, please love me still,

Your Harry

Reading it had certainly stolen her breath. Jo'd grabbed the mail on a rare run to the mailbox and left it to look through later because Zoe was calling for her from another room, something about fairy wings. She hadn't finished going through the mail, though she knew herself. It would sit for days now, it's why she usually tried to only touch it twice, retrieval, open, sort, business, discard. Otherwise, things went awry, bills late, invitations missed.

Jo was not organized, but she had systems. They usually worked, but they were down now. That day, she and Zoe had made a unicorn costume out of her clothes and played pretend in her room. It kept Jo  distracted and sane. It kept Zoe luminous, her little light. She'd woken up from a dream about cups with golden cracks and knew she was weak. Had she opened that letter that day, she would have went or him, since she had deleted his number, or even slid into his DMs, god help her. No call to or from Ethan could have stopped her.

It was a blessing that the mail sat untended for three more days. She had just hung up with Ethan, he'd been begging her to come down and see him and Sean off, which she knew was just his way of asking for her to come help.

"Come on Mum, you can cry in the departures at the airport and I can kiss Zoe's hair and Sean can be her horsey. Your summer schedule is so light right now. You have got to be just rambling about the house."

That was exactly what she was doing. Jo would call it nesting if it was in preparation for a happy event, or if she was picking up and making the place better, but she wasn't. She was mostly drinking tea, tending Zoe, and staying in bed whenever she could. She was worried for when Zoe went to Colin's for his weeks soon. Ethan would be gone too. If she could get up the gumption, she was going to write out a plan, maybe she would clear out old clothes and sell the crib that had wound up in a corner.

Jo also knew that Ethan wanted her to come and mum him. Make sure he had everything, make them snacks. And she wanted to, it would cheer her up and be a great distraction, but it would also be that harmful help she was really trying to give less and less of. He could stand on his feet, and plan his outfits, pack his bags, and make his snacks.

"Nugget, I'm afraid you need to do this yourself. But how about Zoe and I come down and see you off on the big day?" she'd brokered.

"Right Mum," he'd sighed. Maybe he knew she was sad. Jo was really trying to hide it, everybody looked tired and had dark circles on video chat, right? It was always a shock to see yourself in a front facing camera accidentally. Nobody looked good so close. "That sounds good, come one day early. I want to see you. I like talking so much." His cheeks were rosy and her heart warmed.

"Ethan, are you getting mushy on me?" she sniffled.

"No, course not." He grinned. "Yeah, yeah, never been in a place where I couldn't get to you if I needed, or..." he leveled her with a stare, and she knew her hiding skills were lackluster. Ethan could see she was miserable. She felt guilty about that too. More reasons to stay away.

"I'll come, next week, Thursday right?" He nodded. "I drop Zoe Friday with Colin, maybe I should go to Mallorca or Ibiza or something." She fantasized aloud.

"Paris Mum, go to Paris. Or Madrid." She rushed off the phone then.

Paris had been a much dreamed over week long trip in her darkened bedroom, before it was cold as a grave. And the Prato, it was on the list, too. She and Harry had laid on their sides and planned meals and days walking museums and nights with wine and touches on balconies.

He'd got out of bed, his tiny ass, each cheek fit in her palm almost, running to his backpack to grab a notebook. "Need to write this down, baby!"

He had this fantasy that they could go while Zoe was at Colin's and before he left the continent. Maybe just Paris or Madrid, but there was a list, she had added Barcelona and Basel. Harry wanted Berlin. They couldn't do them all in two weeks. But they could go to two. They had plans to make plans.

There was no way she could go to Paris. Maybe she would go to Porto. If she needed to escape. And then she opened that letter. And almost got in her car and drove to Bath. Or the airport. Breath and bone, he stole one and had taught her how strong her spine was. Jo wanted to keep those things, those feelings.

She did love him still. But she was back to the place where she had been, that loving Harry was a beautiful, but temporary experience. Now tinged with tints of blue, a little sadder but deeper for its varied emotional significance.

That day though, unicorns and toddlers saved her, and wine. But she made shades of green, and did not message him. Or write him back. The letter went in the trash.

It came back out when she was cleaning up from dinner. A bit of sauce on the corner. It went in the bottom of her drawer. Close enough to feel it nearby, but hidden so she wouldn't read it and weep.

This morning, she had to do things. There was no food here. The breakup depression had cleaned out her freezer and cupboard. Zoe has been asking for Tesco juice and cheddar cheese for days. This was a pleasant side effect of heartache, a lower bill for the grocery. It had been sometime since she had been to the grocery with flyaway Zoe, perhaps since the Lake District.

Since a lifetime ago.

Zoe was her usual chatterbox self and they sang baby shark on the way there, and it felt good, to look in the rear view and see her shining face and wide smile.

She hadn't asked for Harry in two days. That was something. Zoe'd sat at the table though, with her unicorns, and looked at her mum. Every time Jo tried to be Uma, Zoe told her she did it wrong. Maybe they could buy a new companion for Eunice. That one Jo could construct the personality and play of, so her lack wouldn't be so apparent.

Jo was looking at bananas and trying to convince herself that she could still buy them, less than they had before. Bananas were his favorite, but Zoe has come to like them in the mornings. She could buy them, Harry didn't have sole ownership of bananas. Zoe was watching a video on her phone, after the fourth thing Jo realized she had but into her buggy she would never normally purchase she decided to forget her decision to limit screen time, again, at least in the grocery store. So she had time to stare at the bananas.

"What I like to do, is I buy two bunches, ones that are the perfect shade of yellow so I can eat them now, and a couple that are a tinge green, those will be ready when the first ones are gone." He'd dimpled at her and Jo'd rolled her eyes. "What color would you call this, Professor?" He'd arched a brow.

"Banana," she'd loved his chuckle, Harry'd almost dropped his under ripe bunch in his mirth. "We don't need so many anyway, it's a picnic."

"What about the drive, and the next couple days at home?" He'd nudged her with his shoulder and simpered at her.

Jo'd rolled her eyes and kissed his muppet pout. "Get the bananas, let's go, Zoe can sleep on the way to the lake."

That was almost a month ago. And he would leave in just over another month for Montreal. She prayed, which she never did, He would go. He would? Right? He now had less reasons to stay.

Jo looked up, she had that strange sensation, a prickle on the back of her neck.

Anne was staring at her, her pretty face pulled into a grim line. Eyes slightly narrowed. Then she squared her shoulders like she had made a decision, and headed for Jo.

Jo was a grown woman, and she had had to have some very awkward conversation in her life. So she did what anyone would do when faced with the oncoming discomfort. She ran, well, she walked very fast to her cart and made for the checkout. She went a roundabout way and used the one on the end where the checker looked confused by the need to do what the name of her job implied.

Jo had forgotten Zoe's cheese, they'd have to come back. But for now, it was time to leave. Jo was tense the entire way home, what was she doing? She was hiding out. She wasn't ready to face up to Harry's mother. It seemed useless now that they, she and Harry, were over anyway. Her village was too small.

This fact was proven to her, when she had gotten Zoe into the house and only one shop bag in, and a car pulled up. As she knew the car, Anne knew where she lived. Jo had a couple choices, and could hide in the house and lock the door, leave the last two bags in the boot, or she could grab a bag and meet Anne at her door.

"Jo, I'd like a word." Anne said, and she turned in her door frame, standing on the stoop Harry haunted as well, in vivid color, and nodded. Her stance said, 'I will not be moved.'

In the kitchen, Jokept her back turned, flipped the switch on the kettle. "Tea?" She glanced at Anne, her glance that of a squirrel assessing danger . Anne looked hard, it was foreign to her features, but when  the mama bear came out, and pushed women who embodied soft to its opposite like nothing else.

"I suppose, where is your daughter?" Anne looked around the living area.

"She went upstairs to play, when we came in, seemed to be on a mission. I found her a new unicorn at Tesco. Suppose she's introducing her to her new stable." Jo tried to smile, rambled.

Anne did not.

"Sorry for the mess, I wasn't expecting company." Jo glanced around, she had dishes in her sink, and laundry to be folded on her sofa, and that was just in the public spaces, she knew her bedroom was worse, and her bathroom, not worth mentioning. Cleaning was at the bottom of her list of priorities, but she just couldn't recently. "I'd have put off the shop, but little girls like to eat, ya know." She shrugged and turned to make the tea. Jo was vibrating with nerves, and she burned her finger trying to hold the cup steady.

"It's alright, did you just get back to town?" Jo almost asked how she knew she had ever left town, but she was not ready to hear his name, though it was inevitable. Maybe it was village knowledge, but if they knew her comings and goings, they knew all. That was something she did not want to contemplate.

"It's hot, needs a minute. Have a seat." This was uncomfortably stiff, and the subtext was screaming between the lines. Jo thought of how Harry had said his mum was not direct with him, just quietly disapproving. She looked disapproving, but her blue green eyes were increasingly soft too as she stared at Jo, Like sympathy was growing, a weed in a damp patch.

Her hand was still a little wet as she tried to discreetly wipe her mouth, push back her hair. Jo couldn't stand the silence, and she didn't feel threatened like she had with Victoria, so she didn't know what to do, speak, wait her out, pretend they did this all the time.

Jo couldn't take it. "I don't think you've ever been here, all the years the boys have been close." She hoped that was diplomatic enough. Did Anne know, or was she as oblivious as Jo? She knew more about Harry, so maybe.

Anne's lips thinned then she licked them and spoke, "I think I came in once, when Harry was here for a weekend. But it's been years, and it was when he was here with Ethan." Not you wasn't stated.

"Well, he was always welcome, as were you." She took a sip and burned her tongue. Pulled back to gently blow.

"Is he still?"

"Hmm," Jo stuttered "what?"

"Is Harry still welcome?" Anne sipped her tea then looked at Jo. "When he spent last week in his old bedroom, he seemed to be under the impression that his open invitation had been rescinded."

Jo looked askance, pulled a breath through thinned lips. Her eyes watered. She hadn't considered that aspect of this. This place had been a home to Harry, as a boy he had the run of it and recently he had hoped to be the man of it. But he wasn't welcome here. She wondered if he was mourning that as well. "Um, I suppose not."

"I followed you home, because I, well, I had some things to say to you. I think I thought you were the villain of this piece. My son is heartbroken, he's wearing it like a hair shirt , and I think he only went home because he'd rather paint at his house. He may have stayed on my couch for forever for me to serve him tea and dry tears. He hasn't been like this since college. I hope to god that wasn't over you too." That actually twisted her stomach, she knew her head shook and lips curled, to think of being with him when he was so young, and who had actually been with him.

No, that was Ethan she assumed, but didn't share. Instead she shook her head and looked up quick to stop the moisture in her eyes from leaking out. "No."

"I wasn't sure if you were done playing with him and cast him off, so you could find yourself a new —"

"I was never playing with him!" Her voice shook while she said it. The insinuation! But had the situation been reversed, she would have choice words too. She might have been screaming. This was so civil and well, so Holmes Chapel, Jo could scream. She wished Anne would.

"I think not, you look worse than him. But, I suppose you have no one to take care of you because you have to take care of them." She took another sip of tea. "And I know something about that."

"I expect you might." She remembered Harry laying on her ass one night talking about his mother's divorces. How he wasn't sure where his father went, hurt that he left so quickly after he was born, that he made Colin look like a prince. Harry's affinity for Zoe made sense, his a little more that big brother but she wouldn't let him be stepdad stasis, made more sense.

"Really, I came to tell you to stay the fuck away from my son, let him lick his wounds, and go abroad, which is a brilliant idea, and move on," she sighed. "Or to call you out for a callous predator." Her head lolled to the side. "You don't seem to be either," she looked around the wrecked house, grocery bags unpacked, all the cupboards opened, that Cidra had once mentioned was a sure sign she was a mess, the laundry unfolded. "You seem like you're...."

"Surviving?" Jo supplied.

"Hurting." Anne gave her a tiny sympathetic look.

Jo closed her eyes, kept them shuddered like a house before a storm that may not come, "I am." She didn't stop the tear this time.

"Mummy!" Came a shrill cry. 

Jo and Anne both jerked their heads to the voice, then smiled a little knowingly, Jo wiping her nose. "I'll have to go see if that's a real emergency, not a three year old one."

"Like no black crayons?" Anne shrugged.

"Exactly." They both stood and Jo went to let Anne out, when Anne put her hand on Jo's forearm.

"I don't know that we can be friends, but if you need somebody to chat with..." Anne trailed off.

Jo looked heavenward. Harry was an apple close to this trunk for sure. "Um, I, I, I really appreciate it, because I don't deserve it—"

"Everybody deserves kindness." Anne raised her brow. Harry had expressions just like that. Her shrug...

"Yes, but I think...." she shuddered, "I think I'll need to call my friend Cidra, I'll just want to check on, Har- H, anyway. I won't be able to stop myself asking, it'll muddy the waters. So thanks, I'm floored by your goodness, but...."

"Ok," Anne looked relieved, then around at the mess. Zoe hollered again. "Call a service, just this once, it's ok to need help. And Jo, I know you're hurting, but if I'm honest, it's for the best you aren't with my son anymore. That opinion hasn't changed. I would send you to Siberia to keep you away from him." It was the hardest she had looked since they locked eyes in the grocery store.

Jo nodded and watched her walk away, rose her hand in farewell, and crushed her tears down.

She didn't cry until later, when Zoe was in bed after the not so minor water color paint mishap. Jo would have to paint. Maybe she'd dabble if those stayed put so long, her walls would never be the same.

And this time, she called Cidra, instead of merlot and weeped out her story. Cidra made all the right noises, but required pictures. Her comments also drew laughs, which Jo desperately needed, and lacked judgment, which was even more necessary.

"Fucking hell, Jo! Get in, love!"

"Cidra, he was also with my son."

"Wow, so he's looks like this and is bi, that is.....really hot."

Jo laughed and said, "You aren't helping."

"Yes I am," Cidra sang back to her. She was absolutely right.

Jo slept better that night than she had since the hotel in the Lake District, and looked less dead and more 35 than her 43 years the next morning for it.

It was better, until, it came. A picture fell out when she sliced open the envelope. She looked at it first. There she was, in washed out Polaroid ink. The oil paint version of her, but she was wind and sand, blowing through the desert at night.

Baby,

I'll call you what I want. For all I know, you are burning these before reading. Please be reading this. Jo, this is my heart. My whole heart on a page and a canvas.

Is it grey where you are? This is the greyest  summer of my life, I stay in bed to wait for dawn, so I know to get up and it doesn't happen. So I stay in bed. Until my hands ache to hold you so bad that I have to hold my brush.

I've sent a picture of you, my version of you. Your skin is desert sand, so dry and hot, and hard to hold. I thought I'd always get to hold you, but you slip through my fingers. I guess I forgot we are dust.

Are we dust? Or ashes? I don't know. All I know is that I wait for you, and you never come.
So I paint you, but I can't even make you stay there.

Are you not coming for you or for Ethan? Or because you hate me? Please don't be in the world hating me.

Please love me, please love me still.
Yours

Jo  was driving 30 minutes later. She was making herself a liar. But the words required action. She could not do nothing. Sit around and do nothing.

"I didn't think you were coming." The smile in his voice was so cheeky, she smacked his cheek affectionately and handed over Zoe.

"Can't a mum change her mind before her son leaves the country for four weeks?"

"I suppose!" Ethan laughed. "But I believe your exact words were, 'Sometimes helping is hurting, darling. You can do this on your own.'" His eyebrow lift brought up her spirits.

"Well, that's why I've left it to the last minute. So now, all the work is done, and I can just help you with checking off your checklist."

"Mum, how do you know I have a checklist?"

Sean came in and said, "Ethan I can't find the voltage adaptor." He looked up from the checklist he had in his hands and Zoe squirmed to get to him. Jo put her down and watched Sean thrust the checklist into Ethan's hands so he could do Superman turns with Zoe.

"What were you asking again?" She smiled at him and was chuckling at his blush. He was so predictable. Yin to her yang. She was a procrastinator, but always got it all done in the nick, where Ethan prepared more than did, and she usually had to complete his painstaking checklist.  He was pretty prepared, Sean more so. And Jo felt calm sending them into the air. She was happy to make them breakfast the next morning though, and the only awkward moment where she had to think about how long she had sat at the stop sign deciding between going south to Bath or North to Manchester, was when Ethan had asked her to make waffles,

"Like from your birthday."

She'd begged off, said she wanted French toast, and twenty-something men were consistent in that they didn't bite the hand that cooked them free food.

She cried while they walked to security, because she'd miss him, and because Greece was far, and because her sponsor was gone. She doubted Ethan would be FaceTiming her daily from there. And she wouldn't be able to run to him if she got another letter. Maybe she would burn it before she read it next time?

She wouldn't.

Ethan turned at the last minute and ran back toward her, backpack jostling like it had when he came from the bus stop all the years of his life. He hugged her and notched his face into her neck. "Bye Mum, I'll miss you, thank you for this so much."

"I'll miss you too, Nugget. Go, fly, call me when you can." A lot, she didn't say, she wanted him to have no cares, he deserved it after the recent reckoning and all the deep conversations it necessitated, those were teary and late night, and they turned off the video.

Zoe cried for 20 minutes, for Sean, and Jo sent videos of it to the boys, the gloating smile on Sean's tousled head was hilarious, as was Ethan's frown. The ice cream with a flake Jo bribed her with was totally worth it, though Zoe was not a child to forget and she knew she was going to be saying no to that for weeks to come during fits. The drive home was calm, as was her exchange with Colin the next day. Jo had even copied Ethan's example and made a checklist of what she packed. She passed it off to Colin. Hopefully, she would get all the socks back, socks were forever being lost.

Jo felt resolved, good, able, and lonely while she sat on her bed that night after laying down and not sleeping. She took herself to a movie the next day, and drove to some Manchester exhibits she hadn't seen over the weekend. She ate at the pub and went for long walks.

By Monday she was pulling her hair out, and considering a bonfire to be fueled by pulp, polaroid, and cotton. Instead she went to buy wine and green paint, which she was forever out of it seemed. Her nights had to be occupied along with her hands. She'd sat at the stop sign again this morning, but she had nowhere to go, south or west. Only true north on her broken compass. She was about to enter the paint aisle of her favorite art supply when her feet felt like they hit miry clay.

Jo wasn't sure if it was him, or a figment of her imagination. A zombified feeling rising to torment her with hope again. He was turned away from her, in a jumper, and wearing tennis shoes. That was unlike Harry. And the man's head was down, so she couldn't see any hair sticking out from under the beanie it was entirely too warm to be wearing. She looked down at her own sweats and sweatshirt and realized sometimes you dressed for how you feel, not how the weather dictates. Jo knew the line of his back, and curve of his thigh. Her brain was moving slow, plodding through her mixed feelings without the fuel it needed. Breathe, she needed breath.

She gasped when he reached for the gold paint. His long fingers hesitant and extended, like the can was a relic that may heal, the hem of a holy man's cloak. If she wasn't sure about his back, denying her knowledge of his physicality, she ran out of denial when she saw the cross on his hand.

Harry must have heard her necessary suction of breath. His head came up and their eyes connected, glittered.

She exhaled.