The base where Colonel works always smells medicinal and clean. Everyone walks around in their uniforms, moving with purpose. So determined to get from one destination to the next.
Grace embraced that for a long time, still does, though now it feels heavy and difficult and tiring.
It’s no different today. Grace leans against the front desk and waits for Miss Debbie to check her ID and sign her in, as if she didn’t practically grow up on this base.
“Do you think today you’ll finally prove I’m an impostor?” Grace asks, when for the third time Miss Debbie holds up her license and squints at it. “Has this all been a sixteen-year-long con?”
Miss Debbie narrows her eyes and slaps Grace’s ID down on the desk. She has pointy, sharp-angled glasses with a chain attached. Even sitting down, Miss Debbie will find a way to make you feel small.
“It’s you, all right,” she says. “Nobody else comes in here with a mouth like that.”
Grace smiles with all her teeth, a terrible habit picked up from Agnes. “Can you buzz me in, please, Miss Debbie?”
She mutters something under her breath that Grace can’t hear. Grace’s mouth has gotten her in trouble here more times than she can remember; she’s given up counting.
“I’ll walk you to Colonel’s office,” Miss Debbie says, locking up her desk and computer before heading toward the big vault-like door that separates them from the people working inside. “I’d hate for you to get lost.”
“I know where I’m going,” Grace says, annoyed. She sighs, following behind Miss Debbie’s office-regulated black heels and her tightly-wound bun.
There was a time Miss Debbie tried to embrace Grace as her willing and malleable pupil. Grace remembers coming here when they first moved. Her clothes still smelled like citrus. Her palms still had scratches from climbing grove trees too high. She remembers Colonel standing here at Miss Debbie’s same desk, a firm hand on her shoulder.
“This is my daughter, Porter,” he said, mouth curving up into what Sharone calls his people smile. “This is Miss Debbie. She runs this place with an iron fist.” Then he winked, like the three of them were in on some joke.
Miss Debbie stood up and reached a hand across. “Hello, Porter. Aren’t you a beautiful thing? Everyone calls me Miss Debbie.”
Grace was angry and lost. Her parents were divorced, and Colonel had moved her across the country. She looked up for orange groves and only found towering, terrifying redwoods. She could climb those forever and never reach the top.
She kept her hands by her side, she remembers. Colonel’s hand tightened on her shoulder, and Grace liked it. She liked the feeling of provoking him, of causing that downturn of his mouth. No more people smile.
“My name is Grace,” she said, with all the force she could muster, “and I am not a thing.”
The impression was lasting and brutal. Grace Porter made a lifelong enemy out of Miss Debbie that day.
They walk. The office is full of people but still hushed, like even the conversations in the little kitchenette are confidential. It’s mostly white men with the same haircut, suits and ties buttoned up so tight their necks bulge. No one bats an eye at Grace. Her gold hair and her amber-brown, freckled skin and her mismatched parents are no longer worth gossip. That’s just Porter, they probably think, while they engage in global warfare at their computer screens like it’s a game of Tetris. Just Colonel’s daughter, nothing special.
The door to Colonel’s office is closed. Miss Debbie knocks and waits. Grace peers into the office and waves through the glass wall. Colonel holds his finger up, gesturing toward the phone.
Miss Debbie glares, huffing at she turns away. She points at the row of seats outside the office until Grace picks one and sits. “You will wait there,” she says sternly. “Very important things happen in this office, Grace Porter, and I will not be responsible for you interrupting your father and jeopardizing security.”
Grace crosses her legs and smiles. “Yes, Miss Debbie,” she says. “The nation’s enemies won’t hear a word from me. God bless America.”
Miss Debbie starts to walk away. She pauses in front of Grace, leaning down just enough to ensure her voice won’t carry. “Your father had such high hopes for you,” she says softly. “It’s a shame.”
Grace looks up and meets her eyes. “A shame, indeed,” she says, and Miss Debbie leaves. Grace lets her shoulders drop like she’s shedding heavy armor.
“Porter?” Colonel calls, sticking his head out of his door. It takes everything in Grace not to feel like she’s picking all that armor back up, heading into the battlefield of Colonel’s office. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
“I’m okay,” she says. She sees his desk is pulled up to a standing position, and try as he might, he can’t hide the stiff way he limps as he walks toward her.
It’s better now with the metal leg. He might stiffen up, but the thing doesn’t buckle underneath him or make him immobile. Even still, she can tell it’s one of his Pain Days.
Colonel gestures toward one of the chairs. Grace sits and folds her legs up in it. He stays standing in front of his computer, pushing his glasses to the top of his head to stare her down.
Finally, he clears his throat. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“You are?”
“I’ve been talking to Sharone,” he says, “about what you said to us at dinner. She made me realize—” He looks at Grace. She doesn’t know what he sees. “You know I love you, right?”
She freezes. She sits up straight, suddenly self-conscious of her ripped jeans and ratty sweatshirt she stole from Raj. “Yes, sir,” she says, wiping her hands on her pants. “Yes.”
Colonel gives her a wry smile. “Good,” he says. “Sharone said maybe I’m too hard on you. That I expect too much.”
Grace remembers being a kid in Florida. She remembers running through the orange groves and getting caught up under people’s feet and climbing too high. She remembers falling.
She remembers the blood that dripped from her palms. Mom fretted, considered driving into town to the hospital. Colonel, stoic and calm, knelt in front of her as she wept. He could still kneel then, and he did, right down to her line of sight and grabbed her hands.
“Porter,” he said. “Hey. Hey. Look at me.”
She looked at him. When Colonel said jump, you jumped. When he said look, you looked.
“You’re a Porter,” he said. “Porters fall, they get back up. Porters bleed, they don’t cry. They bandage themselves, and they get back up. That’s what we do.”
Grace sniffled. “But it hurts.”
“That’s life,” he said. “But I expect you to be able to handle it. Do you know why?”
Grace, tearful and bleeding, knew. Of course, she knew. “Because I’m a Porter.”
“Because you’re a Porter,” Colonel reiterates. “So, hold your hands out, and I’ll bandage them, and it’ll be done.”
Grace thinks back to that day while she sits in her father’s office. He says, “Maybe I expect too much,” and Grace, still remembering the hurt in her hand, says, “I’m a Porter,” the way she knows she should. “There’s no such thing.”
He nods. “That’s what I told Sharone. I said I didn’t know what she was talking about.”
“You don’t expect too much from me,” she says. “I just—”
“You want to be the best,” Colonel says. “It’s normal to need to think about how to get there.”
“That’s not what you said at dinner,” she mutters. Louder she says, “I’ll figure it out.”
He raises his eyebrows. “I know you will. Is that what you came to talk about?”
Grace stares at her knees. “I talked to Professor MacMillan,” she says quietly. “We talked about how I’ve been doing this for so long.”
“This?”
“School,” she clarifies. “Studying. Pursuing this goal. Research. Working.”
Colonel makes a small, questioning noise. “You’re committed. You create goals, and you reach them. That’s how I raised you.” You’re a Porter. That’s what Porters do.
“Yeah.” Grace sighs. “But did you ever think that maybe one person isn’t meant to go so hard for that long? That maybe—” She looks down and steels herself. “Maybe I need time now because I never had a chance to do anything else but my studies. Be anything else.”
“Porter—”
“Listen,” she demands. Her knuckles go tense around the arms of the chair. “I’ve been fighting for this since I was eighteen. I’m turning twenty-nine this year, and I’ve never taken a damn day off. Not even on weekends.”
“Okay,” he cuts in, hand up. “Let’s try to keep this civil. Now, let me see if I can break this down.”
She opens her mouth to argue, and Colonel raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t I let you talk?” She shuts her mouth. “You chose a course of study. You pursued that course of study as you were expected. You became a doctor in the field. How am I doing so far?”
Grace blows out a breath through her nose. She stays quiet.
“You didn’t want to do medicine, so you didn’t do medicine. The only expectation I had was that you see astronomy through to the end of its course and find a stable career in that field. It seems our expectations are no longer aligned. So, explain it to me. You’d like a vacation instead of a job?”
Grace can feel her entire body pull taut and tense, like a rubber band stretched to its limit. One wrong move, and it turns into a stinging weapon. “I didn’t say anything about a vacation. I just think maybe I could use a break. I know it’ll be a fight to get in the door. I just want some time to breathe before then.”
“You knew this when you decided to pursue astronomy, yes?”
She bites her tongue hard. “Yes, sir.”
Colonel runs a hand over his face. He turns his back to her and stares out his huge window. There’s nothing out there that will give him any answers, but he turns away regardless. “You know,” he says quietly, “I think there was a part of me that always knew this would happen.”
“There’s nothing happening.” She feels frustration simmer like heat in the pit of her stomach. “I’m not doing anything wrong. It’s just hard and frustrating and—”
“I knew this would happen,” he repeats. He turns back around, and he looks at Grace like she is a stranger. “Things get hard, and you want to give up. You want to flee. There is more of your mother in you than you know, Porter.”
It hurts like a punch in the gut. He says it with such shame, such disappointment.
“Is it so terrible to be like Mom in some ways?” She stares up at Colonel, eyes burning. She lifts her chin in defiance, like a stubborn, jutting coastal cliff. “Is it so terrible to be like someone you loved once?”
Another standoff. She refuses to break, refuses to cave, refuses to give in. Colonel deflates. It’s nothing noticeable, but Grace has seen the proud stature of his shoulders enough to know when they come back down to earth.
“What do you want me to say?” he asks wearily. He rubs his leg, aching again, and he looks older and more tired than Grace has ever seen. He looks like a Black man who has been going and going for a long time and never, ever stopped. Someone who never wavered from the path they were put on.
“Mom sent me some money,” she says suddenly. “Maybe I could—” She falters, trying to find the words. “Maybe I could visit her for a little bit.” Colonel barks out a dry, disbelieving laugh. Grace flinches and has to catch herself. “It’s been a while since I—”
“I know how long it’s been,” he cuts in. His arms come free of their crossed grip. “Is she even in Florida? Or is she doing some candle retreat in Tibet again? Or was that sheep farming in Iceland?”
Grace shakes her head. “I think she’s home,” she says. “I could stay until harvest season. Maybe help her with the groves and recharge and clear my head. It’s honest work.”
Colonel nods, as if things he already foresaw are being confirmed. He walks across the office, leg held stiff and his teeth gritted. He opens his office door, a clear dismissal.
“It is honest work,” he says, his voice as quiet as Grace has ever heard it. “But, it’s not your work. Dismissed, Porter.”
“Yes, sir.” She walks out, flicking her scrunchie against her wrist. The sting of this distracts from the one in her father’s words.
Colonel closes his door. She slinks through the aisles of the office, and no one gives her a second glance. Not even Miss Debbie.
“And then he said, ‘It’s not your work’ and it was so goddamn condescending. I just sat there and let him say that to me.” Grace groans, turning her head into Ximena’s lap. “I know it’s not my work, but my work is keeping me up at night.”
Ximena hums. It’s nearing 10 p.m. and the hospital, this part of it anyway, is quiet. Ximena’s in her lavender scrubs and ugly, comfortable shoes, and she’s the best person for a good hug. “He’s your dad,” she says simply. “Parents are weird. Our parents were taught that they couldn’t stop. If they worked hard enough, twice as hard even, things would work out. It’s hard to fight them on that, you know? They think they’re right, and we think we’re right.”
Grace relaxes at Ximena’s reassuring smile. They’re out of the way, tucked in a corner of one of the waiting rooms. It’s empty except for them and an old woman who’s sleeping with her chin tucked into her chest. She looks like she’s been here for hours.
“I’m not keeping you from work, right?” she asks again. “I can leave.” Grace really, really wants to stay.
Ximena snorts, but she doesn’t move. “We both know you wouldn’t leave. You would mope around until Agnes came, and then you’d be griping at her.”
“Yeah, so?”
She flicks Grace on the forehead. “You’re not keeping me from work,” she says for the third time. “Room 542 told me I was ‘in too good of a mood’ and sent me away, so I’m free for another eight minutes.”
“Good,” Grace sighs. “That means you have eight minutes to commiserate about how Colonel was wrong. Let’s get to it.”
Ximena is silent, and Grace looks up to see the hesitation on her face.
“Ximena,” she says. “I’m waiting.”
Ximena blows out a breath. She checks her watch, because she’s responsible and efficient and wears a watch, and glances down at Grace. “I know you and Colonel have your issues,” she starts slowly, “and normally you know I would say he’s being too much.”
“And how is this different?”
Ximena shoves her curls behind her ear in frustration. This close, Grace can make out the brown freckles that splatter over her nose and cheeks and brown skin. “He was wrong to dismiss you for needing a break,” she says. “Because it’s true, Porter, you need a fucking break. You think we all can’t see that?”
Grace tenses, and Ximena smooths a hand down her back. “I don’t need a break,” Grace insists. “I just think having one would help clear my head. Anyway.”
“Anyway,” Ximena says, “I think maybe you should think about where he’s coming from. He’s always worked so hard, and he taught you to do the same. Maybe he sees you staying in Florida with your mom for a while as running away from the problem.”
“But it’s not running away.”
“It’s not,” Ximena agrees. “I’m not saying he’s right, Porter. I’m just saying maybe you need to make him see your perspective. Maybe get your mom to help. You don’t have to do it by yourself.”
Grace squeezes her eyes shut.
“Not right now,” she says to Ximena. “I feel like I’m falling apart as it is.”
“Okay,” Ximena says. Her voice is calm and even. “I’ll drop it.” She looks at her watch again. “I should probably go anyway. I have a new patient. Apparently, she has grabby hands.”
“Really?” Grace asks. “I mean, I couldn’t blame her. I have one of the hottest best friends in town.”
Ximena shakes her head with a small, teasing smile pulling at her mouth. “Maybe it’ll be a welcome change from those horny-ass teenagers who ask me to read them porn. Like, fuck off, Timothy.”
That startles a laugh out of Grace, loud, cackling and inappropriate in a hospital waiting room. It frees up some of the black sludge in her chest.
“There you are,” Ximena says softly. “There’s my girl.”
“Here I am.”
They maneuver up, and Ximena leaves her with one last kiss, buried in her hair. “Agnes should be around soon. You know she likes terrorizing the staff while she waits for me to get off work.”
“That sounds right,” Grace says. “She was a menace when she was stuck in here.”
Ximena huffs. “She’s a menace now. Don’t leave before you see her, okay? Promise.”
She holds out a pinky that Grace takes easily. “I promise. Love you so much it hurts.”
“Love you, Star Girl.”
Ximena walks away. The nurses leave Grace be because she’s familiar enough to them now. She closes her eyes and envisions a timeline where it succeeded, the compromises she made to keep Mom and Colonel and herself happy. Where following her dreams didn’t feel like so much endless, uncertain work.
She comes back to herself when Agnes slinks into the waiting room. It’s late, and it looks like she’s been asleep since she got off work nearly six hours ago. Her scarlet beret is impossible to miss, as is the relieved groan she lets out when she sees Grace.
“God, I thought you were on the fourth floor, not the fifth. I was looking for you for, like, ten minutes.”
Grace gives her a weak smile. She’s tired. She tries anyway.
Agnes plops down on the seat next to her. “Shit,” she says. “What is it? Are you in trouble? I’ve got us covered.” She rummages around in her pockets, and then her holographic fanny pack.
Grace reaches for her. “I’m not in trouble,” she reassures. “Agnes, Agnes, what are you looking for?”
Agnes looks up. In her hands she’s holding a small pocketknife and eight quarters.
Grace sighs. “I guess I can understand the knife? But why the quarters?”
“Pay phone,” Agnes says. “Duh.”
“Right, of course. But I’m good.”
Agnes shoves her knife and all her change back in her fanny pack. “So, you look like shit,” she observes. “Wanna talk about it or do that thing where we pretend feelings are stupid and don’t exist? I love that one.”
“The second, please,” Grace says. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and stares at the screen. Her home screen, the one she looks at now, is a picture of an orange grove. Her orange grove. She took it the last time she was there, last summer, before she needed to put her head down and finish her doctorate program. She misses it terribly.
It’ll look the same when you come back, Mom told Grace. Everything stays the same around here.
But Grace is not the same. Instead of the familiar fight to make room for herself in classes and labs, she finds herself in the unfamiliar terrain of the working world. And for the first time in eleven years, she finds herself weary and hesitant and wondering, Why did the universe choose me, if it knew I would have to fight tooth and nail? Grace has been busy, and now she would like to slow down. She would like to stop for a moment.
“You’re hurting yourself,” Agnes says suddenly. She grabs Grace where she’s digging red, painful half-moons into her arm. “You know what, let’s get some air. This place makes me remember when I was stuck here and crazy. Crazier. C’mon.” She tries to pull Grace up, but Grace makes herself heavy and unmoving, like the roots of a tree.
“Porter,” Agnes says, voice sharp. “Let’s go outside.”
Grace shakes her head, exhaustion hitting her all at once. Maybe it was the conversation with Colonel and rehashing it with Ximena. Maybe it is deciding, for once, to put her own needs first. “I want to call my mom,” she says. “I think I want to go away for a little bit. Visit the groves and have some space to breathe.”
Agnes narrows her eyes, fingers still working to uncurl Grace’s nails from her skin. “Not that it’s any of my business, but do you need to call right now? It’s ten at night and even later there. Maybe get some sleep first.”
“My mom is an insomniac like me. She’ll be up,” Grace says. She looks at Agnes. Her beret and sleep-mussed hair and moon-shadowed eyes. “I am tired,” she admits out loud. It becomes real, like that. “Maybe it’ll help to see what she thinks.”
Agnes closes her eyes. “Twenty minutes,” she says. “If you’re not back by then, I’m sending Ximena after you.”
Grace nods. “I’ll be okay” she says, the thought buzzing in circles around her brain. I just want to slow down. I just want to stop.
“Okay,” Agnes says. “Get your hands to stop shaking before you call.”
“I’m fine,” she says, disappearing out of the waiting room. “I’m okay.”
She picks a back stairway where the walls and concrete steps don’t echo too much. It’s cold and dusty and dark, and she crouches low on the steps, back against the painted wall. She presses Call and listens to the line ring until the voice mail clicks on.
“Figures,” she mutters. “Jesus fucking Christ. Just pick up.” Frustration boils over. This hallway has heard worse, if not from Grace then from someone else, frustrated or grieving or hiding.
One more time.
“Hey, Porter,” Mom says when she answers. Her voice is light, like perpetual summer. “I thought we were having a FaceTime call later this week? I’m in Germany.”
Grace sighs. Of course, another trip. “Sorry,” she says. “Is this costing you money?”
“The hostel has Wi-Fi,” Mom says. A deep voice comes from the other line, muffled and distorted. “Kelly says hi.”
Kelly is Mom’s fiancé that Grace has never met in person. He wasn’t around when she visited last summer. Grace has only met him informally through grainy video connections. “Hi, Kelly,” she says flatly.
“He just woke up,” Mom says. “Lightest sleeper I’ve ever seen. But nothing like your father. A yawn could wake Colonel up. Is he still like that?”
Colonel had awful nightmares when she was younger. She would wake up to get water and would find Colonel sitting in the dark, his hand in the shape of a gun pointed at an invisible enemy.
His hand never wavered, never trembled in its grip, even in his sleep.
“I don’t know,” she says truthfully. Sharone would never say. “Listen, do you have a few minutes to talk?”
“How long do you need? We’re heading out once we’re dressed for the day, and then I’ll lose the Wi-Fi. I’m all yours until then, Star Girl.”
Grace squares her shoulders in this empty stairway. A soldier’s posture. “I want to come visit you at the groves,” she says, willing her voice firm. “Things have been a little—a little difficult, and I just need some time away.” She pauses. “What do you think?”
“You want to come visit?” Mom asks. “I thought you’d be busy heading up teams to research distant moons by now.”
“Well, I’m not,” Grace snaps, short-tempered. “I could help you get ready for the harvest season,” she says. “I would work. I’m not asking for a handout from you.”
“Where is this coming from?”
“Mom—”
“Listen for a minute, Grace Adrian Porter,” Mom says. “I’m just asking you to tell me what’s going on. You don’t sound good. What’s wrong? Is it Colonel?”
Grace leans her head against the wall. “No,” she says. “It’s not Colonel, Mom. It’s me. I just need—I want to get away for a while. Everything moved so fast for so long, and now I just—I just want a break.” She inhales a shaky, uneven breath and wipes her eyes. She lowers her voice, so not even her echo will hear her beg. “Please.”
Mom clears her throat. “Tell me what happened,” she says. “You don’t sound like yourself.”
“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she says. “It’s been taking more out of me than I realized, finding a position. The people have been taking more out of me. I want some time to decide where I want to go next with my career. Professor MacMillan thought it sounded like a good idea, too.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I’m just tired, that’s all. Maybe getting away would help.”
“I bet Colonel was thrilled to hear that,” Mom says, and Grace racks out a wet, broken laugh. “Can I tell you something?” Mom asks.
Grace sighs. “Yeah,” she says. “Sure.”
“I want you to know you can always come visit. Southbury is your home, same as Portland. But, baby, getting away won’t make the things go away, you hear me?” Mom’s voice is soft. “It took me a long time to learn that. But your father is a fighter, and he raised you to be a fighter because he knew what kind of world we’re living in. Don’t let it break your spirit or wring you out dry. Okay?”
Grace swallows hard, tasting salt water. “Yeah,” she croaks out. “I hear you.”
“Jesus, Porter, don’t cry. I can hear you. Don’t cry.”
“I know.” She wipes her stinging eyes. “Porters don’t cry. I know.”
Mom sniffs. “I used to hate hearing you say that,” she says. “But you’ve always listened to Colonel like he was God.”
“Well, I didn’t know any better,” Grace says.
“That’s a lie if I ever heard one,” Mom says, voice fierce. “I know neither me or Colonel are always right, but we always want the best for you. If you think coming to stay in Southbury for a while is the best thing for you, then I won’t say no.”
“But?” Grace asks.
“But it’ll be hard whether you’re in Portland or Florida or the North damn Pole. I don’t want you to stop because it’s hard. I know that’s real easy for me to say, but it’s true. Stop if you need a break, honey, but don’t stop because they want you to. You got too much potential.”
It breaks something in Grace, the simple honesty in her words. It breaks something, to acknowledge out loud that it will not be easy, no matter where she looks. She mourns for the optimism she felt right after graduation, when she thought, I have come this far, and I will go even farther, and no one can stop me. She grieves for that feeling because even if Porters don’t cry, Grace does. Grace cries, in a hospital stairwell that’s heard worse.
“My Star Girl,” Mom says. “Please stop crying. It’s breaking my heart.”
Grace tries, she really tries, but the tears don’t stop and neither does the hollow black abyss spreading right under her ribs. It used to be filled with research and classes and exams, the dream of what lay ahead. Now there’s just nothing.
She cries, and all that nothing eats her up. The stairwell echoes with it.
She stays there until eventually someone wraps their arms around her and holds her tight.
“Let me go,” she says, choking on her voice as she struggles in the grip. “Let me go.”
“No,” Agnes says. “I’m not letting you go.” She sounds scared, voice shaky. “You’re hurting yourself. Look. Look.”
Grace looks. There are long, red scratches on her knuckles, on her wrists and arms.
“Hello?” Agnes says, picking up Grace’s dropped phone. “Hi, Ms. Mel, this is Agnes...Yeah, I’m gonna get her home, I promise...Yes. Yes, I promise. I have to go now...Okay. Yes. Bye.”
She hangs up, still wrapped around Grace. “You never sound that polite,” Grace says, enough of her energy gone that she goes limp. Agnes takes her weight.
“Yeah,” Agnes grunts, shifting so they don’t fall. “Well, you never scare the shit out of me like this,” she mutters. “Twenty minutes, I said. Twenty minutes.”
“Did you tell Ximena?”
“You already know the answer to that.” She holds Grace tight. “She called Raj to pick us up. Fuck if I’m dragging you on a train or into an Uber like this.”
Grace sighs, closing her eyes. “Aggie,” she says quietly. Her throat and her eyes ache. Her heart aches. “I’m so tired.”
“I know, dummy,” Agnes says. “But you’re not allowed to hurt yourself. I don’t care how tired you are.”
Grace nods. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Agnes says quickly. Grace can’t see her, but she hears the salt water in her voice, and her stomach lurches. “Just don’t scare me like that.” She clutches Grace’s hands, her palms, her wrists, where on Agnes’s there are moon craters. The terra firma skin there has been brutalized and torn up and scarred over. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“I won’t,” Grace mumbles clumsily. She grips Agnes’s hands back, tight as she can. “Just tired.”
“Okay,” Agnes says. “Okay, Porter. We’re gonna go home, okay?”
Time passes in a blur. There is Agnes, ever-present Agnes who doesn’t let go of Grace’s hands. There is Ximena on Grace’s other side, who holds her up. There is Raj, who curses and helps Grace into the car. He looks into her eyes, kisses her forehead and says, “Hey, little sis. You good?” He presses quick, insistent kisses on her face.
There is a long, quiet ride. Agnes doesn’t buckle up. She sits as close to Grace as possible, so close she might as well be in her lap. As the trees and roads and buildings race past, Grace hears Ximena and Raj talking in whispers up front.
He carries her, bridal-style up to Ximena’s bed.
“We’re having a sleepover,” Ximena says. “That sound good, babe?”
All four of them squish together in the bed. They hold Grace together, hold her bursting seams closed. Eventually she tumbles into a weary, dizzy sleep.