“The heat’s good,” says Olive. “Thank Christ. I’m not bad with winter, but I get mad depressed if my place is cold.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I once had this basement apartment. I lived there alone after my boyfriend left. I was working two jobs, burning the candle at both ends, and in winter I would go crazy. I mean, like actually crazy. Like I’m not being ableist; I’m actually crazy. It was so bad for my brain.”

“How long you do that for?” asks Gemma.

“Years,” says Olive, clearly travelling back to that time in her mind. “I would get up, and I’d never feel rested. I would shiver over to the shower, and no matter when I left the house, it seemed like it was always nighttime, or about to be nighttime. And I could never get warm. And I was always so, so tired.”

“I understand,” says Gemma.

Ava kisses Gemma on top of her head. “I guess I should at least put that food away. You sit here and visit.”

Visit. That was the word her grandparents had always used. “I’m so glad you could come over to visit,” her Oma would say as Gemma and her Opa rolled into the Mitchell house on weekends, her Oma slowly getting up in her study and easing her way into the living room. It was unusual, Gemma learned later, for a Mennonite woman of that time and place to have a study with books. Suspiciously unusual.

Her grandparents had always looked so excited to see each other. Gemma had taken a picture of them once, sitting together in her Oma’s living room. And she had taken a picture of her Oma’s bedroom, a small rectangle of dark blue linoleum with a small bed against a wall. She had tried taking a picture of her Oma’s pill bottles too, as there were so many of them, neatly arranged in lines on top of her dresser, but her Opa had passed by then, grimaced faintly, and said, “No, no.” Gemma wishes she still had all those pictures. She doesn’t know how long she can continue trusting her memory.

The clink of plates and the rush of tap water come from the kitchen. “Where you going after this, Gemma?” says Olive.

“Eh, I dunno.” Gemma smiles. “Back to the city tomorrow. Then maybe east. I’ll figure it out.” She says this sincerely, even though it’d occurred to her earlier: she can’t get a room for the night without an ID either. But she’s got some dough; she’ll figure it out. She always has.

Ava returns to the living room as Olive makes a disgusted snort and tosses her phone on the table. “Oh no,” says Ava. “Is there discourse?”

“There’s discourse,” says Olive. “Yes, it’s trans discourse. It is the worst. Don’t you miss the socials?”

“See,” says Gemma, “to me, social media is for, like, making jokes and making sure my friends are still alive.”

“I don’t miss the socials even a little bit,” says Ava.