In Marlie’s shoes-off home, the carpet was marshmallow-thick. On the living room floor, Ayanna spread out the board and placard from the project. Meredith, as Ayanna now had to think about the professor, was lighting candles. Ayanna wrote Valerie’s name on a piece of paper over and over, with one variation: I am in the same room as Marlie. Felix had recommended it as part of the process. At breakfast, he said the only time he had gotten Amir to talk to him was by doing this.

She nodded, grateful for the advice. There was a moment when she stopped herself from asking if talking to Amir had given Felix closure. Ayanna had decided instead to trust he would tell her when he was ready. She also wasn’t sure if closure was something she actually wanted and didn’t want to have that conversation. Ayanna wanted to reach a point where she could think about Olivia every day without feeling guilt or recriminations; she wanted to keep her sister close. Closure still felt to her like being able to forget Olivia ever happened.

Marlie walked over and sat close to Ayanna, looked at what she was writing, and held out her hands to her. They were cold and soft in Ayanna’s own, her fingernails were painted a pink that seemed barely worth the effort because they looked so close in shade to the matrixes of Ayanna’s own nails. Why paint your nails fingernail-pink?

“I’ve been waiting sixty years for this,” Marlie said as they looked down at the board and placard together. In the corner of the room, a pink mist was forming; soon, Ayanna knew, it would be a woman, eager to say her truth.

“You never got over it?” Ayanna asked. “Even after sixty years.”

For the first time, Marlie looked sad. Old. “No one ever told you that you’re not supposed to get over grief?”

The mist continued to take shape, a hand forming on the left, a head forming with long hairs sprouting.

“You don’t get over it,” Marlie said. “You let it shape you. You don’t let it metastasize in you.” She struggled on the word metastasize, had to repeat it before Ayanna realized what she was saying. “You appreciate that you could love someone or something so hard. You promise to keep living your life loving hard.”

Before Ayanna could respond, or know how to respond, Valerie was there. Fully formed, beautiful and young, tinted pink, but looking mostly like a person.

She sat on the floor between them, took each of their hands. Valerie’s and Marlie’s eyes were locked on each other. Both were smiling.

“We loved each other when we were girls but couldn’t be together,” they said in unison.

“When we were twenty-two,” Valerie said, her voice with a hint of static woven between each word, “we went swimming at night together.”