Anji didn’t know if Kit was listening, but she continued. The last week had been the epitome of confused thoughts, black whirls of ideas and worries and memories and now, revelation. She felt an elemental need to lay them out to another person, to bare her humanity and ask someone, anyone to share the load of all these past years. She’d always imagined herself confiding in Kaia and Libby, eventually, but the walls she’d put up between her past and present had remained firm. How ironic that the person marching her toward death would be the person who brought the walls down.

“Every day I wake up afraid I’ll forget their faces. But they never fade. Everything is clear as the day I lost them. Their voices, their hands, how they walked.” She pulled her coat tight. “The way they smelled. Toward the end, they were arguing more, but they always made up. I got kicked out of the house a few times so they could be alone.

“People aren’t happy together just…,” she waved a hand, “because they’re together. There has to be more there, and there really was. It was love. They made each other laugh every day. I remember I’d come home once, sweet on one of the kids from school because of a stupid joke they’d told, and my mother told me: ‘Anji, dear, I’m so sorry to tell you this, but you’re screwed. If they make you laugh, you’re already chasing.’” Anji cast her eyes to the ground. “You would have liked her.”

“I’m sure.”

“I still dream about her,” Anji said. She wiped at one eye, feeling stupid for crying in front of Kit and emboldened all at once. “Dad too, of course, but not as much. Mom and I didn’t even talk as often, but we had a different understanding. We didn’t need words.” Anji stared across the open space at the brick and chipped mortar of the lighthouse stairs, spiraling up and up. “I dream of her at home sometimes, sitting at the table, looking through the tiny window facing the street, watching people’s feet swing past. Or I’m at school and she’s come to surprise me. In others it’s the street right outside our house, and I’m running home with my bag flapping behind me and I’m jumping into her arms. And then I’m yelling and smacking at her arm because she wasn’t supposed to just … come back like that. Not after she was gone for so long without saying goodbye.” Anji ran a hand over her shaved scalp. “And then I wake up, and she’s gone again.”

Thunder crackled, a flash of light following after.