Later, in bed and not asleep next to Cora, whose breathing against Esther’s collarbone still sounds awake, Esther says, “It’s just weird that she has a kid who’s still alive.”

Cora sighs and kisses the skin under Esther’s earlobe.

“I mean”—Esther rolls over onto her back, staying in Cora’s arms—“it’s weird to me that there’s this person still out there who knew her so well . . . who saw her every day of her life, for this huge part of her life.” Gertrude probably never misremembers what her mother looks like.

“Yeah.” Cora noses at the part of Esther’s scalp where she’s shaved close. “I love how your hair feels here.”

“Thanks. You should read Julia Kristeva.”

Cora snorts. “It’s almost one.”

“She’s a literary theorist. She wrote this essay about abjection.”

“What about abjection?”

When Esther lies in bed next to Cora, she feels too big, like she has swollen to take up more room than she’s owed. She imagines that her flesh gives too softly under Cora’s sharp weight, like the skin of a rotting fruit. She doesn’t like the sound of Cora tolerating her, though maybe she shouldn’t mind this time, because she doesn’t remember enough of the Queer Theory course she read Kristeva in to answer many follow-up questions. Just this one concept, which stuck in her mind. “It’s the idea that sometimes, when we reject someone or something—violently, that is—it’s because we see ourselves in it.”

“Oh.” Cora is quiet for a minute. She runs her fingers up and down Esther’s arm. When Esther looks over at her, her eyelids are dragging.

“You know, there was this friend she wrote to. For decades, I mean, since college. Her name was Emilia.”

“Emilia,” Cora repeats, trying to show she’s listening. It occurs to Esther, blearily, that at least by description Cora looks a lot like how she’s always imagined Anais. Slender, dark-haired, a little clever laughter in her smile. Does that mean anything? Esther wonders. Does it mean anything that she only just noticed?

But it’s late, and Esther rolls onto her back, looks up at the bumps and slashes in the sloppy white paint on the hotel ceiling, and continues, “Her biographers mention her writing letters to Emilia, but there’s only one in her papers. They only know they wrote for so long because Anais refers to Emilia in letters to other people.” This is something else Esther has been hoping to find, a significant letter. She hasn’t, only a note sent by Emilia in college in admiration of a story of Anais’s published in a school periodical. It is very cheerful, dull, and ordinary.

Cora’s breath is hot and her voice is sleepy against Esther’s neck. “Do you think Emilia has them?”