It would be easy to find Tessa’s new home. She’d told Edith herself that it was across the street from the old fourplex. The slope that tested her lungs as she walked up it, the scrape of cold air. Edith had seen no reason to come back to this part of the city and found, now, that this was the right impulse. There was no sweep of nostalgia, no memories freed from cobwebs. It was nothing compared to the warm mouth of the T station, the backstreets of froyo shops and poetry bookstores. The dead sweep of campus trees. Anything held more secrets than all the street before her. If not for the fourplex’s familiar seafoam façade, she’d think she was in the wrong place.

Maybe if she went into the old apartment. As a child, her father had taken her to his childhood home in Michigan; the woman who lived there had let them come in. People did things like that. They commiserated about doors that still stuck in the humidity, the lack of counter space, the shower’s puny water pressure. So little had changed since her father’s childhood. What was six years? A graduate degree, a tumultuous romance, the death of your closest friend. You became a girl and so what? Time kept passing. There was so much, too much, life left.

Edith didn’t cross to the house that Tess and Devin shared. Up the hill a little farther and then no more, watching the windows for motion or light. She pulled her glove off with her teeth. Tessa picked up on the last ring.

Edith.

Sorry about yesterday.

No small talk, huh?

Is it a bad time?

It’s okay. No sign of movement. Edith could stand here till dark, a shivering sentinel to a life that could never have been hers. Tessa and Devin spooning curry over rice. Watching an absurd action movie. Her legs draped across his. Keeping each other warm. The easy closeness that comes with love.

It was stupid. It doesn’t matter, Tessa, I’m happy for you.

Of course it matters. We don’t get upset about stuff that doesn’t matter.

I don’t think that’s true.

It is, though, Joni. What else would it mean to matter? There was the sound of a sink running, a cloth pulled across a counter. She could picture the sky-blue waffle weave. She could picture the bowl of oranges on the table. A box of pasta, ready for the pot.

I do mean it, though. I’m happy for you and Devin.

Thank you. A breath. You would really like him, I think.

I mean—­

Another time.

Right. Inside there’d be a tank, but all the old fish would have died. They wouldn’t even be a memory to the new fish. Edith’s ungloved hand was going numb. I’m headed home tomorrow.

I’m sure Texas misses you.

Yeah. What did that mean? I don’t want to bother you. A lie. All she wanted was to bother Tessa, once a day every day, until both stopped breathing.

Look, Edith, one more thing.

Yes, Lieutenant Columbo?

I shouldn’t have left this for so late in the trip. There isn’t a normal way to tell you this.

There was no fear or disruption in Edith’s voice, not a tremor beyond the cold in her hands and throat. Oh man, you’re marrying him.

Yeah.

A single concession: she sat on the curb. Concrete leaching all the warmth from her ass.

That’s great, Tessa.

You sound like you mean it.

I do. Whatever she felt later, she understood this had nothing to do with her. Someone she cared about, someone she loved, was getting the ending her story deserved. You should have all the happiness imaginable, Joan.

So should you, you know.

Sure. Edith bit her nails. A little hurt, a little blood rolling in the nailbed. Jesus Christ, Tess, you’re going to have a husband.

I know. Tessa laughed. It’s fucking ridiculous.

I would’ve left it too late to bring up, too.

No, Joni, you would’ve just sent me a postcard from your honeymoon.

Well, never fear, now I’ll be rubbing your face in it. If ever it happens.

When it happens.

Sure. Boy it’d be funny if she died out here, now. Maybe they’d put up a statue to her, or an eternal flame. The Grave of the Lonely Trans Girl. Well look, I should probably fuck off.

Hang on a second, Joni.

Yeah?

It really was good to see you this weekend.

You too, Joan. It wasn’t about nostalgia, or counterfactuals. It was because Tessa was one of the best people she’d ever known. Congratulations again.

You mean it less this time, I can hear it.

No.

We’ll get used to this, Edith. This, like everything else. Now Edith was crying. Don’t stay away for six years again, okay?

I won’t. Steady as she could. I promise.

She listened to Into the Woods as she stowed the sofa bed, packed her clothes, washed her face. “Oh if life were made of moments . . .”

How good would it be to never leave? But to stay would mean a real life here. Traffic and delays on the T and incomprehensible rent. This weekend wasn’t life, only a moment in the woods.

Adam drove her to the airport.

It’s been so good to be here, she said, trying not to cry. To be around friends.

You have friends in Texas, I know you do.

It’s not the same.

I know.

You know someone for ten years, twelve. You see all the ways they changed. You go on being friends.

Adam took her hand. You’re literally not allowed to stay away this long again.

I already promised Tessa.

Good.

They’d talked briefly about Tessa’s impending nuptials. She and Devin didn’t even have a ring, or a venue, only the vague promise of next summer. A whole cycle of seasons between then and now. Edith was fine. She and Adam and Michael had spent the final four hours of the night squeezed onto the couch, watching MTV’s Room Raiders.

They pulled into Logan Airport. Adam hugged her, told her he loved her. There was no drama, no sense of denouement. People did this every day.

She let herself cry in the security line. The intersecting fairy-tale lives of Into the Woods on repeat in her headphones. Her backpack knocked a McDonald’s bag from its place atop the trash can and photographic slides spilled out across the tile. She stopped crying long enough to gather them up. They were photos of places with no people: a log cabin, a clearing in the woods, a lake. Edith didn’t wonder that someone had felt the need to leave these behind, that this ballast had been too much to carry. Later, she wished she’d taken one with her. Instead, she replaced them all in the bag, replaced the bag atop the trash. Someone had been unable to bring themselves to throw away these trace memories. Let yet another person be their custodian. She had crying to do. She was leaving.