We drove out of Phoenix with the lowering sun blazing strong and hot orange, casting long shadows from the saguaro and ocotillo cacti on the side of the road. After we left Maya’s house, neither Connor nor I said anything, only got in the Cherokee and headed back to the freeway. My thoughts kept darting this way and that, and as the suburbs of the various valley communities flashed by, I couldn’t help wondering if my father had taken this same route so many years ago. Where had he been heading? Where had he gone?
I didn’t know, and I was feeling the beginnings of a headache. The heat, probably, and it frustrated me that I couldn’t ask Connor to pull off at a drive-through so I could get a Coke. That had always worked for me in the past, and a glass of wine would have been even better, but I knew that I had to watch the caffeine consumption, and alcohol was really out of the question.
It wasn’t until we were almost completely out of the Phoenix sprawl, passing by the outlet stores at Anthem, that Connor finally spoke. “You doing okay?”
“I guess so. Just tired, probably.”
He looked over at me quickly, then returned his attention to the road. “Should we have stopped to get something to eat?”
“No, it’s not that.” Well, maybe it was, in a way. I could feel the beginnings of hunger pangs starting, and I knew there wasn’t much between Phoenix and our turn-off on the 260. On the other hand, I really didn’t want to delay getting home. There were a few places in Cottonwood that stayed open past nine. We could stop there if we needed to. Fidgeting with the cap of the water bottle that sat in the cup holder next to me, I said, “It just seems like every time we go asking questions, I end up with about a million more.”
“Such as?”
“Well, the whole Wilcox thing, for one. I’m not saying my mother was a strong enough witch to sniff out a Wilcox the way Maya can, but she should have known my father was a warlock.”
“Maybe she did. It’s not exactly the sort of thing they would’ve been discussing around Linda Sanderson, after all.”
He had a point. Even so, I felt like I should press on. “But if my mother had known he was a warlock, wouldn’t she have wanted to know more about his family? I mean, part of the whole witch thing is your clan affiliation and all that.”
“Maybe he lied and said he was with the Santiagos or something.”
“Maybe,” I repeated, my tone dubious. Of course, I had no idea what my father had really looked like, except he was tall and dark-haired, so maybe he could’ve passed for one of the Santiagos. As I mulled that over, another thought struck me. “That could have been what their fight was about.”
“That she found out he was lying?”
“Yes, especially if she somehow discovered he was a Wilcox. I can’t think of too many other things that would make someone so angry that they’d kick out the father of their baby only a few days before the child was due.”
Connor didn’t reply immediately, but instead tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, apparently considering what I’d just said. “That makes sense, I suppose.”
“And it also explains why she would never say anything to my aunt about who my father was. I mean, if he really had been a Santiago or just some beach bum she’d picked up in Newport, then it wouldn’t have been so important to conceal his identity.”
No arguing from Connor on that one. He only gave a grim little nod, as if acknowledging his clan’s poor reputation. Now I knew it wasn’t that clear-cut, that there were people in the Wilcox family who were just as honorable as any McAllister, but twenty years ago the lines had been pretty clearly drawn. East was east and west was west, and all that. Those twain definitely didn’t meet…until my mother and Andre got together.
Would Aunt Rachel have agreed to take me in, raised me, if she’d known I was half Wilcox?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about that. I tried to tell myself of course she would, that she would never abandon her sister’s child…but I just didn’t know for sure. And maybe my mother had known, or at least guessed, and so made sure to keep her mouth shut.
Right then I almost wished her ghost had taken to haunting that tricky curve partway down the mountain. Then at least I could have gone to her and demanded some real information. But apparently she’d seen no reason to stick around. Her spirit was long gone, and I’d have to find my own answers.
“Another thing,” I began, and the setting sun flashed off Connor’s teeth as he grinned.
“Just one?”
“Well, I figured I’d start with this one.”
He gave a slight nod of acknowledgment, so I went on,
“I’m also trying to figure out what his game was.”
“Game?”
I shifted in my seat and glanced up at him, wondering if he was being disingenuous. “Come on, Connor — think about it. Supposedly he was engaged to Marie, and yet he dumped her for some unknown reason, went to California, and just magically met the runaway McAllister who was supposed to be the next prima…before she chickened out and disappeared.”
“Okay, if you put it that way….” Even so, he shrugged, then pushed the visor up and out of the way. The sun was low enough now that the visor wasn’t doing him much good. “Maybe things weren’t working out with Marie, so he took off.”
“Do people in your family have a history of taking off and going to California?”
“Well, no.”
“It’s almost as if he knew who my mother was, even if the reverse wasn’t true.”
“I think that may be stretching it a bit.”
I wasn’t so sure. After all, what were the odds that two members of warring witch clans would meet so far from home? Pretty high, even if witches had a way of sensing others with similar powers. “And what about Marie?” I asked.
“What about her?”
“Do you think she’ll talk to us about Andre?”
At that question he did look away from the road and over at me, frowning slightly. The last reddish light of the sun painted the outline of his profile, making him look like some god who’d condescended to share a ride with me. His next words, however, were far from godlike. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure she’ll be plenty happy to tell us everything about the guy who dumped her more than twenty years ago.”
“I’m not asking as if she’d be happy — I’m asking if she would do it.”
For a long moment he didn’t say anything. Then, finally, “I honestly don’t know.”
We didn’t talk much the rest of the way, each of us absorbed in our thoughts as the long dusk finally gave way to night and a thin yellow crescent moon rose above the mesa to our right. By the time we pulled off at the 260 and began heading toward Cottonwood, I could feel my stomach protesting its current empty state. We stopped at the Denny’s in town because there wasn’t much else open at that hour, and ordered some burgers. After that it was back up the winding road to Jerome, back to the quiet Victorian house waiting for us on the hill.
By then I was completely exhausted, and it seemed that Connor was, too, because we fell into bed and only held each other, too tired for anything else. My sleep was heavy, deep and dark, quiet, until I heard a keening sound and realized it was the sound of gulls. Below that came the deep rhythmic murmur of the ocean crashing against the shore.
Well, I’d just come from the beach, so I supposed it wasn’t so odd that it had invaded my dreams as well. The image in my mind brightened, almost as if the sun was coming up over the water. But no, that had to be wrong, because in Newport the sun set over the ocean, not the other way around.
Not that dreams had to make any sense, of course.
Someone was walking down the beach, her loose hair whipping in the wind. As she got closer, I saw that she was slender, although her belly was rounded, in the later stages of pregnancy.
My mother.
I’d often wished I would dream of her. When I was younger, I used to sit and stare at the one picture of her my aunt kept on her desk, thinking that if I looked at my mother’s face long enough, memorizing her features and how they were similar to mine, then she’d have to appear in my dreams. She would come and talk to me, tell me she missed me and loved me. That never happened, though.
But she was here now. As she stopped a few feet away from me, I realized our eyes were nearly level. So I was dreaming this as my now-self, and not the wistful little girl I used to be.
“I’ve been waiting for you a long time,” I said.
“I know.” Her hand dropped to the curve of her belly, and she smiled. She was wearing a loose jumper-style dress with a T-shirt underneath it, and Mary Jane–style Doc Martens. Looking at her, I realized she was exactly the same age I was now.
In a way, it was eerie to watch her, to see in her face my own straight little nose and arched brows, the rather wide mouth. My hair was darker, my eyes brilliant emerald where hers were bright blue, but anyone seeing us in that moment would have thought we were sisters.
“Why did you come here?” I asked.
“Here?” she asked vaguely, looking around.
“California.”
“We’re not really in California, you know.”
I’d had these sorts of circular conversations in dreams before, so I knew the best thing to do was press on. “It looks like California. Close enough.”
“I wanted to see the ocean.”
“And that’s the only reason?’
Her dreamy expression cleared, and the look she gave me was almost sharp. “You of all people should know why I wanted to get out of Jerome.”
“I should?”
“Are you happy, being prima?”
The question took me aback. I hadn’t ever really stopped to think about it that way. Not that I’d had much of a chance to stop and think about anything, what with how crazy my life had been for the past six months. I was certainly happy with Connor, but that happiness wasn’t dependent on my being prima. In fact, things would have been a lot less complicated if I had just turned out to be your ordinary garden-variety witch.
“I don’t think it’s a question of being happy,” I said slowly. “It’s what I was born for, so…I guess I’m settling into it.”
“Rachel trained you well,” she remarked. “Making sure you were raised to be a good little prima. That wasn’t me.”
I didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in my voice. “Apparently not, since you took off at the first opportunity.”
“As I said, it wasn’t me. Their expectations were crushing me.”
“So you just left? And what about me? Having a baby was just something you did for kicks, like going to look at the ocean?”
In real life, she probably would have taken offense. In my dream, though, she only looked away from me, at the sun rising in the wrong place. “No. I wanted you. Or at least I thought I wanted you. Until….”
“Until you found out my father was really a Wilcox, and not whatever he told you?” A far braver question than I would have asked if she’d really been standing there in front of me. But I guessed that my subconscious understood this wasn’t real, and had decided to go for broke.
“Would you want a child of a Wilcox?” she asked frankly, blue eyes wide with guileless curiosity.
“I’m having the child of a Wilcox,” I pointed out. As I replied, I suddenly felt heavy, oddly off-balance, and I looked down to see that my belly was nearly as rounded as my mother’s.
“Unfortunately,” she said, laying a hand on my swollen midsection. Then, almost off-handedly, she added, “You might want to get that looked at.”
Then she was gone, disappearing as neatly as the ghostly Maisie or Mary Mullen ever had. I stood there on the beach, feeling the unaccustomed heaviness of late pregnancy. Something about that odd west-rising sun compelled me, and I began to walk into the water, hardly seeming to notice as it came up to my knees, then my waist, then my chest, and finally my mouth. Cool black surrounded me, and suffocated me, and I drifted away with the tide, letting it take me.
An urgent hand on my arm. “Angela. Angela!” Connor’s voice.
I blinked, taking in the blackness of the space around me, my eyes gradually adjusting to see the faint glow of moonlight coming in from the window across the room. “Wha?” I said groggily.
“You were breathing really hard, gasping, almost like something was choking you.” He was turned toward me, leaning on one elbow as he watched me with worried eyes. “Bad dream?”
“Sort of,” I replied. My face felt oddly chilled, so I reached up to touch my cheek, only to find both it and my mouth wet, as if someone had splashed water on me. What the…? I wiped the moisture away, telling myself it could’ve been saliva. But I’d never been much of a drooler, and my skin was wet enough that it would’ve required a Great Dane to create that much slobber.
Walking into the black water, letting it rise up and over my head….
I shivered, and at once Connor was reaching out to me, taking me in his arms and holding me close. “Jesus, you’re freezing,” he said. “It’s not even cold.”
And it wasn’t. Late May and June were some of the warmest months in these parts, until the monsoon rains came with their blessed moisture and much-welcomed cloud cover. We almost always got a cool breeze at night in Jerome, but even so, the temperature in the room was probably in the low 70s.
“I dreamed,” I began, then shook my head. “It’s silly.”
“What?” When I didn’t answer, he brushed his lips against my hair and said quietly, “Angela, you’re the prima here. Even if you’re not a seer, even if you don’t necessarily have visions, your dreams still can be important.”
What he said was true, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted to acknowledge that fact. It would mean that in my dream I’d slipped into the astral plane, had left my body to walk in that otherworld. Events that happened there could affect one’s corporeal body, or so I’d been told. Until now, though, I’d never experienced that kind of psychic travel. What did it mean?
“And your hair is damp,” he added, sounding quite matter-of-fact, as if these sorts of things happened every day. Maybe they did in the Wilcox family. He’d never given me a great deal of detail on how Marie’s second sight really worked.
“I dreamed that I was talking to my mother, and she was pregnant with me. Then she left, and I walked into the ocean. Just walked straight into it, like I wanted to drown.”
For a few seconds he was silent, apparently processing this latest revelation. “And you woke up all damp, as if you really had gotten wet.”
“Yes.” Despite the warmth of his embrace, my teeth began to chatter, and I realized the tank top I wore was sticking wetly to my body. True, that could’ve been sweat, but it wasn’t quite warm enough in there for me to have been perspiring that much. “I need to get out of this top,” I told him.
He let go at once. I pushed off the covers and slid out of bed, then went to the dresser and got a clean top. As I pulled it on and tugged it down to mostly cover my underwear, my hand slid against my belly. Maybe the slightest roundness there, which could have had just as much to do with the enormous burger I’d eaten too soon before going to bed than the baby, which still couldn’t be much bigger than a fingernail at this point.
My mother’s words came back to me. You might want to get that looked at.
After locating a hair elastic on the dresser’s top and tugging my damp hair back into it, I turned to Connor. “I think we need to get that doctor’s appointment lined up as soon as possible.”
Whether any magical strings were pulled, I didn’t know for sure, but that Friday I was in Flagstaff at the office of Dr. Ruiz, the ob-gyn several of Connor’s cousins had recommended. I decided to leave aside the improbability of getting an appointment at all on the Friday before a long weekend, let alone with a highly in-demand doctor, and just be glad that I wouldn’t be left to stew over the holiday as to whether my baby was okay or not.
The medical assistant asked if I wanted Connor in the room with me while they did the ultrasound, and of course I said yes. This was the part that scared me the most — logically I knew it was just a baby and that everything should be fine at this point — but damn straight I was going to have Connor at my side as I got the first true confirmation that the baby was real. Okay, yes, I’d done the home pregnancy test, and had it confirmed at Planned Parenthood, but that wasn’t the same thing as hearing your baby’s heartbeat for the first time.
Dr. Ruiz was probably in her early forties, with her dark hair cut in the kind of sleek bob I envied because I knew I could never get my own half wavy/half curly hair to do anything that controlled. She also seemed always calm, always unhurried, even though her waiting room was full and she had to be chomping at the bit to get out of there and start her own long weekend…most likely praying that none of her patients would go into labor while she was attending a barbecue.
Probably because mine was a very low-risk pregnancy, she’d decided a transvaginal ultrasound wasn’t necessary at this stage. I lay there in a pink paper examination robe while she poured cold goo on my stomach and then began the procedure. Connor stood next to me, holding my hand.
“Okay,” she said, peering at the monitor as she moved the ultrasound wand slowly over my belly, “the baby looks good, just about the right size and in the right position. And there’s the heartbeat. Nice and strong.” But then she paused, a line appearing between her brows as she frowned.
“What is it?” I asked, worry pulsing like ice through my veins. “Is something wrong?” Connor’s fingers tightened around mine, but he didn’t say anything, just stood there, waiting.
“Just a sec….” She was moving the sensor back and forth over my belly, her dark eyes intent on the screen. “Wait…got it!”
“Got what?” I asked, thinking, Are there any congenital birth defects in the Wilcox family? No, that’s crazy…I’ve met most of them…they’re all fine….
Sometimes it would be really nice if I could just get my brain to shut up.
The worry line disappeared, and she smiled at us. “Well, you two are going to have your hands full. It looks like you’re carrying twins, Angela.”
“Twins?” I said blankly.
“Yes. One is mostly hidden by the other, so it’s hard to see right now. But look there.” She pointed at a blot on the ultrasound screen. To me it just looked like a paler blip against an amorphous darkness, with the faintest little trace of…something…behind it.
“That’s our baby…our babies?” I asked, reflecting it was a good thing I’d never had a burning desire to be an ultrasound technician. I had a feeling I wouldn’t have been very good at it.
“Yes. They look about the same size, which is good. And this explains why some of your blood test results came back so high. The hormones in your bloodstream are elevated because you’re carrying two babies, not one.”
“But everything else is okay?” Connor asked. His expression was, in a word, gobsmacked. Not that I could blame him. One baby was enough to handle, but twins?
“Perfectly okay,” Dr. Ruiz assured him. “They’re a good size, and their heartbeats are strong, in the 116 to 118 range. No reason why they shouldn’t be — Angela is a very healthy young woman.” Her gaze flicked back to me. “But because you’re carrying twins, you need to make sure you’re eating enough to properly nourish both of them — ”
“That’s not a problem,” Connor remarked with a grin. “She’s been eating her weight lately.”
I shot him a mock-severe glare, but Dr. Ruiz merely said, “That’s good to hear, although you should be putting on more weight than you are. Worry about losing the baby weight after you have the babies.”
Babies. Plural. It was such an alien concept that I still wasn’t sure exactly how to process it.
“I’ll do my best,” I told her. “But Connor’s right. I’ve been eating just about anything that isn’t nailed down. I’ve always had a fast metabolism, though.”
“Okay, we’ll keep an eye on it.” She turned to the medical assistant, who’d been hovering in the background during the procedure. “Lora, let’s have Angela back here in three weeks.”
That sounded like an awfully long time to go between appointments. I must have looked dubious, because the doctor went on, “Everything’s going well, so I don’t see any need to make you come in before that. However, if anything feels off to you, if you have any bleeding or severe nausea or cramps — any of that — call us immediately. Okay?”
I nodded, not liking the sound of that very much. But things did go wrong sometimes, and better to know someone was standing by, ready to dive in, so to speak, in case the unthinkable happened.
After that everyone went out, leaving me alone in the exam room so I could get dressed. As I did so, I tried to keep myself from panicking. Twins. Two babies. Two tiny little people growing inside me. I had no idea how that happened. Twins did not run in the McAllister family. Yes, my cousin Brady and his wife just had twins, but she was the daughter of a twin, and it sounded like they did pop up about every other generation in her family.
I slung my purse over my shoulder and went out to see the receptionist. My next appointment was set for June 12th, and Connor and I walked out of the office into the bright sunshine, both of us a little unsteady on our feet.
It wasn’t until we were on Route 66 and headed toward his apartment that he spoke. “Before you ask, no, twins don’t run in the Wilcox family. I mean, I’m the anomaly because I was born at all, since all the other heirs in Jeremiah’s line were only children. But we really don’t have any twins in the extended family, either.”
“Same with the McAllisters,” I said. Twisting in my seat so I could see him better, I added, “So what do you think it means?”
“I have no idea,” he confessed. “This is where I really wish Marie would get back to me.”
We’d come up to Flagstaff the night before, and Connor had tried calling her, saying he wanted to talk. She hadn’t responded, which, according to him, was strange. Usually she got back to him within the hour when he called.
“Maybe she went away for the long weekend?” I suggested, and he’d only shaken his head and said that he’d never heard of Marie going away on vacation. Ever.
“Why did you want to ask her about this particularly?” I asked now. “Hoping for a vision?”
I’d been teasing him, just a little, but he didn’t smile. “Marie sort of acts as the unofficial family historian — keeps all the genealogical files, that kind of thing. So she’d know if there were some Wilcox twins out there that I hadn’t heard of.”
“Hmm,” I said, considering. It did seem kind of strange that Marie was out of contact, but I wasn’t going to let myself worry about it too much. “I’m sure she’ll call you back soon. It hasn’t even been a full day yet.”
He tilted his head slightly but didn’t say anything.
“Are you…okay with this? I mean, one baby is a big enough deal, but two….”
The distant look disappeared from his eyes immediately, and he reached over and laid a hand on my thigh, gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Of course I’m okay with it. Although it does figure that Angela McAllister the overachiever would be the first McAllister prima to ever have twins.”
“Bite me,” I replied blithely, and then we both started to laugh. The tension that had filled the interior of the car seemed to evaporate at the sound of our laughter, and I knew then that we were going to be okay.
Because of my appointment with the ob-gyn — and because it was supposed to be almost ninety in Jerome, compared to the upper seventies in Flagstaff — we’d already decided to stay at Connor’s place for the long weekend. Besides, I figured it would give me a chance to do some shopping in town and start putting together a wardrobe to accommodate my waistline, which I guessed was going to start expanding any day now.
Between shopping and going out to eat so I could keep the twins properly supplied with nutrients, I didn’t stop to think much about Marie’s disappearance, even though I knew Connor kept trying to get in touch with her. Several times I’d been tempted to call Sydney and tell her about the twins, but Connor and I had made a sort of unspoken agreement not to tell anyone quite yet. At any rate, she wasn’t all that available, as she’d gone to the Colorado River with Anthony and a bunch of his friends. Cell reception there was horrible, although she did manage to squeeze out a text or two, mostly to say they were having fun and wished Connor and I could have come along. Maybe next yr was her final comment. I didn’t bother to respond to that. If I were still around a year from now, I’d have my hands full with not one but two newborns, and playing in the Colorado River would be pretty far down my priority list.
Finally, on Sunday afternoon, Connor turned to me and said, “I’m going to call Lucas. Maybe he knows what’s going on with Marie.”
“Sure,” I told him. Although part of me wanted to ask what was really fueling his obsession over talking to Marie, on some level I thought I understood. Connor had spent his whole life thinking Damon would be running things, and that he’d be able to go on quietly living his life without a lot of interference. But with Damon gone, Connor found himself the head of the clan, in a position of authority he’d never anticipated. It was probably natural of him to go to Marie for guidance, since she’d apparently offered counsel to Damon during most of his tenure as primus.
So Connor pulled out his phone and called Lucas, who did pick up, luckily. I listened with half an ear as Connor asked after Marie. Of course I couldn’t hear Lucas’s reply, but from the growing frown on Connor’s face, it appeared his cousin hadn’t spoken with her, either.
“Okay, thanks,” Connor said. “We’ll just keep checking — no, we really hadn’t talked about that.” A long pause, and I looked up from my iPad to see him frown and push his overgrown hair back off his forehead. “I don’t think — well, okay, I’ll talk to Angela about it and let you know. I doubt we could do anything before Tuesday because of the holiday. Yeah, okay. ’Bye.”
He ended the call and shoved the phone back in his pocket. Sensing I wasn’t going to be getting any more reading done today, I closed the Kindle app on the iPad and set the device down on the coffee table.
“What was that about?” I inquired.
“Lucas hasn’t heard anything from Marie, either.” He was frowning, reaching up to rub his brow as if his head hurt.
“I sort of gathered that.” Since he continued to scowl, I got up from the couch and went over to him, then put my arms around his waist. “But what did he want you to talk to me about?”
Connor folded me in his arms, pulling me close. “Oh, you know Lucas. He’s got the bit between his teeth on this house thing, says he was talking to one of his golf buddies, someone who’s going through a nasty divorce. Anyway, the guy wants to sell their second home — or maybe it was their third home — the one here in Flag. He’s selling it fully furnished and is ready to deal, mostly because he just wants to get out from under it.”
In a way that sounded great, as long as Connor and I both liked the furniture. It would save us a lot of work. Then I wanted to shake my head at myself. I couldn’t live in Flagstaff. My home was in Jerome, high up on Cleopatra Hill. But because I didn’t know what was going to happen, and had to make myself realize that Connor might be raising two babies on his own, I had to recognize that this apartment was going to be woefully inadequate in a few short months. If Connor could slide into something that was basically turn-key, it would take a lot of the pressure off.
“Okay,” I said. “It sounds like it could be a possibility. What’s he asking for it?”
“A hair under a mil.”
I pushed myself away from him and gazed up into his face, looking for the joke and not seeing it. “A — a million?” I finally managed.
“Ange, I got more than that from the sale of Damon’s house. If we like this place, we can get it for cash.”
Since I didn’t know what else to say, I had to settle for a weak “wow” before going back to the couch so I could sit down. Suddenly my legs felt just a little shaky. I had to hope that someday I’d get used to the casual way the Wilcox family threw large chunks of money around. “And he wants us to look at it.”
“Sooner rather than later. Maybe Tuesday.”
“That won’t work,” I said immediately. “I’ve got to be back in Jerome. The contractors are coming to get started on the kitchen.”
He grimaced before coming to sit next to me on the couch. “Damn. I’d forgotten about that.” A pause as he seemed to study my expression. “Are you really going through with the remodel? It just seems so…disruptive.”
“It will be,” I replied. “But I can’t cancel the whole thing. It’s way too late for that. And it wouldn’t be fair to all those people counting on the income from the project.”
“You’re right, of course. And that sounds like something a prima would say.” To my surprise, he bent forward and kissed me, very gently, on the lips. “So okay, maybe Wednesday or Thursday.”
“Thursday,” I told him. “I need to be back in Jerome for more than just one day. Partly because I should be around for the contractors, and partly because I know no one’s thrilled about me disappearing up here for the weekend. They didn’t say anything, of course, but you could practically see the disapproval radiating off the elders when I told them I wouldn’t be around for a few days.”
“They need to watch it…especially Margot. She has no idea that I could unleash Lucas on her at any time.”
The thought was so incongruous that I had to laugh. “I dare you. Seriously.”
“Well, if Lucas sells us on this house, he’s going to need something to occupy his time….”
The glint in Connor’s eye as he said this as so devilish that all I could do was pull him to me and kiss him, kiss him hard. His mouth opened to mine, and we tasted one another, the fire of our bond licking along our veins. In short order I was in Connor’s arms and being carried upstairs, where we spent the rest of the afternoon losing ourselves in one another, forgetting about houses and disapproving elders and the mystery of Marie’s radio silence.
Even then, though, I knew they wouldn’t be forgotten forever.