She couldn’t say what compelled her to take the knife the last time she saw Val.

There were a few more visits between that trip to the river and the phone call, on a too-sunny autumn morning, from Tess.

It would be a better story if they’d never seen each other again.

Sometimes when Val was there, she wished Tessa would visit too. The three of them cooking breakfast in the morning. Going to the movies, Val yelling about useless male characters. No one loves you like the people who knew you when you were young. Others might love you better, but they don’t love you the same.

Maybe it was insurance against something, the knife. Not to bring Val back to her, but because she noticed the deeper creases under her friend’s eyes. The way she bit the skin of her wrist to bruising. Valerie told her all sorts of things in those visits. Things she’d kept hidden. The predictable things, and new ones.

Do you ever get tired of moving so much? Edith asked in bed one morning. They hadn’t had sex since the river, but it would be too great a violence to sleep apart.

I didn’t used to. She starfished across the bed’s breadth. Her arm a band of warmth across Edith’s sore, nascent tits. Now it’s easier to picture. There was no suggestion that she and Edith might try their hand at coupledom again. But it was nice to think of her staying someplace.

Can you picture me visiting you? Edith laughed. It’d be like college again. All that grandma furniture.

I’m older now. It’ll have to be Louis Quatorze or nothing at all.

There was a second—between Tessa’s slow sigh and learning it was a car accident—when Edith thought: is this my fault? That Val hadn’t had a way to defend herself. That she hadn’t been able—But it wasn’t about any of them.

Stealing it was easy. Edith went into Val’s bag to find a cigarette and slipped the folded blade into her hand. You could do anything in plain sight so long as you did it well.

Or maybe Valerie let her. They lay in Edith’s bed, both waiting for sleep, and Val said, You’re always going to be in my life, Edie. Whether you like it or not, you can’t get away from me. She was there in the morning. They had leftover popcorn for breakfast, kernels like salty Styrofoam. It took no time for her to pack her clothes and coffeemaker and go.

Edith stood in the parking lot, barefoot and shivering slightly, watching the space Val’s car left behind. Thinking about the knife, and the threads of awareness that bound them—all of them—that could not be cut.