Olive doesn’t look up. “Morning,” she says. She’s not unpleasant about it.

Olive is eating soup on the bottle-green couch when Gemma emerges dressed from the bedroom. The door to Olive’s room is open, but all Gemma can see from this angle is carpet. And a charcoal-grey wall.

Ava’d told her Olive was prone to freak-outs, though this was mostly when she’d lived alone, which had not been good for Olive. “She likes knowing other people are around her,” Ava’d said.

“I’m Gemma.” She sits in the corduroy recliner.

“I’m Olive.”

“Cool.”

“Sure.”

“I’m probably going out for a bit,” Gemma says carefully. “Does that make problems for you?”

Olive doesn’t look up. “No, go crazy.”

“Do you have a spare key …?”

She shakes her head. “Inbox me.”

Gemma adds her on Messenger. Then she sees her blood work’s come in. Three results listed as ABNORMAL. Red blood cells low. Whatever. Vitamin B₁₂ low. Whatever. Ferritin high—

Wait, that was weird. The hell is ferritin? Gemma scans the reference range.

It was way high.

The fuck does this even mean?! She begins to google “high ferritin” and it auto-fills: “high ferritin levels and alcohol”—

“Ava tells me you’re a Mennonite,” Olive says.

“Huh?” Gemma looks up, dazed. She stows her phone. “My family is.”

Gemma registers that though Olive is speaking to her in a friendly manner, she has a very intense face and very intense eyes. And she’s wearing a satin nightgown with roses on it.

“You were raised that way?” Olive asks.

“I didn’t—I didn’t have a conservative upbringing.” Gemma stands to leave. “My dad didn’t raise me like he was raised. But I grew up here and I went to church, yeah.”

“Tell me about that sometime.”

“Uh, sure.” Gemma picks up her bag. “I’ll be back in a bit, ’kay?”

“Have fun.” Olive gives a little wave.

A lot of people grow up in small towns because that’s where their family’s been for generations. Not Gemma. Her dad’s from Steinbach, her mom Kitchener. They’d met at CMU back when it was Canadian Mennonite Bible College, then they came here for her mom’s job at the research station. When they split up, her mom left and her dad stayed.

A lot of transsexual women gulp the lady pills, but people from past lives still see the same old face. Not Gemma. She hadn’t been fishy pre-hormones; she was just a girl for whom estrogen had worked rare genuine magic. A deceitful face surgeon could’ve used her picture in ads—that’s how extreme the dice had come up for Gemma. So that morning, she sits in Coffee Culture in black jean shorts and a ponytail through a ball cap, and no one looks at her askance.

And a lot of weirdos grow up in small towns, split once they can, and then go back for a visit to find the same old people doing the same damn shit. But not Gemma. She doesn’t recognize a soul. Maybe, if she squints, that guy looks like Brandon Wiens, a kid in grade three who’d whaled on her balls with a hockey mini stick. Maybe, with some massaging of memory, that man looks like Mr Reimer, a principal who had been kind. But it’s all just a guess. She leaves the café and walks down Stephen Street—everyone is a stranger. She puts her nose to the window of what was once d’8 Schtove Restaurant and is now the office of the Tory MLA. A staffer in shirt sleeves raises an eyebrow at her while Gemma imagines an elderly couple sharing Rollkuchen. She peers down Nelson Street, where she’d lived at the other end with her dad in a little bungalow. She walks to North Railway in the shimmering heat, laughs at the obvious Winklerites sneaking into the LC (what was the point of them finally getting one in their own damn town, huh?). She thinks about hoofing it out to Tasti’s for a burger before remembering she’s broke, and then remembering Tasti’s has closed, too.