When I’m close to my little sisters, I start remembering the broken trailer in Texarkana, the one where Tolliver and I lived with his father, my mother, his brother, my sister, and our two mutual sibs, who were practically babies at the time that household dissolved.

The delicately balanced deception we older kids had maintained for several years had collapsed when my older sister, Cameron, vanished. Our unpleasant home life had been exposed to public view, and our little sisters had been taken away. Tolliver had gone to live with his brother, Mark, and I’d gone to a foster home.

The two little girls didn’t even remember Cameron. I’d asked them the last time we saw them. The girls live with Aunt Iona and Uncle Hank, who don’t like us to visit. We do, though; Mariella and Grace (called Gracie) are our sisters, and we want them to remember they have family.

I propped up on one elbow to watch Tolliver drying himself off. He’d left the bathroom door open while he showered, because otherwise the mirror became too foggy for him to use while he shaved.

We don’t look unalike; we’re both thin and dark haired. Our hair’s even about the same length. His eyes are brown; mine are dark gray. But Tolliver’s complexion is pitted and scarred from acne, because his dad didn’t think of sending him to a dermatologist. His face is narrower, and he often has a mustache. He hates wearing anything besides jeans and shirts, but I like to dress up a bit more, and since I’m the “talent,” it’s more or less expected. Tolliver is my manager, my consultant, my main support, my companion, and for the past few weeks he’s been my lover.

He turned to look at me, saw I was watching. He smiled and dropped the towel.

“Come here,” I said.

He was quick to oblige.

“WANT to go for a run?” I asked in the afternoon. “You can take another shower afterward, with me. So you won’t waste water.”

We had our running clothes on in no time, and we took off after we’d stretched. Tolliver’s faster than I am. Most often, he pulls away for the last half mile or so, and today was no exception.

We were pleased to find a good place to run. Our motel was on the access road right off the interstate. It was flanked by other hotels and motels, restaurants and gas stations, the usual assortment of services for road warriors. But to the rear of the motel, we found one of those “business parks”: two curving streets with careful, still-small plantings in the flower beds in front of the one-story buildings, each with a parking area. A median ran down the middle of these two streets, wide enough to support a planting of crepe myrtles. There were sidewalks, too, to give the place an inviting and friendly look. Since it was late Friday afternoon, the traffic was minimal among the rows of rectangular buildings chopped up into characterless entities like Great Systems, Inc. and Genesis Distributors, which might conduct business of any sort. Each block was marked off by a driveway running between the buildings, a narrow thing that must lead to a parking lot in back for the employees. There were almost no cars parked in front; customers were gone, the last employees were leaving for the weekend.