The teachers liked her, though. Ben and I never came without our homework finished or our hair brushed or our shoes tied, and we knew to say “please,” “ma’am,” and “thank you.” What I’m getting to is one of her stories, when Ben was a freshman I think, was going around and causing a commotion because—well, it was that one with the meat grinder. Yes, all the boys especially remember that one. And Ben’s English teacher thought it would be right to have a word with her about it, say this sort of thing couldn’t be going around school. She thought that was the funniest thing. “It isn’t my fault,” she said. “You ought to take trash like that away from them.”

That was not how Esther imagined Anais as a mother.

Cora hums. She sets the TV guide down and turns to consider Esther directly, the tilt of her head slightly avian. “You know that you don’t have to read it, right?” she says, after an extended pause.

“I want to.”

“I just—” Cora threads her fingers together over her stomach, fidgeting. Esther feels shitty for making her nervous. “Does it really matter what she—whether she was gay or not, or whatever she thought about queer people? You’re still gay; those books still meant a lot to you. Is reading some homophobic shit she wrote going to do anything other than make you feel worse?”

Esther blanches, though she knows Cora is trying to be kind, is partly embarrassed by that kindness. “I know that. That’s not why this matters to me.” She sighs, rubs at her forehead, hands still cold enough from their snowy walk here that her own touch feels alien. “I wish I knew how to explain it.” Though some childish part does not think she should have to, is bitterly disappointed that just handing over Anais’s words was not explanation enough.

“That’s okay. I’m not, like—I get that it’s important to you.” Cora shakes her head, not in denial but as if she is trying to loosen the right language from its crannies in her mind. “That’s enough for me. I just—I’m wondering if the best outcome here might be not knowing?”

Esther tries to give Cora credit by considering this, but she is already positive of her answer. “No.” She goes over to the bed and puts her chin on Cora’s shoulder, tries to reassure them both with a little body heat. “I don’t ever want to not know something about her.”

The only way to really love someone is to know them. Even more so, Esther thinks, that is what love can be broken down to. That is what intimacy is. With enough love you could conjure someone perfectly in a room they are not in.

* * *