“You know my name?”

“Of course,” replied the older man. He had a graying goatee to match his head and the shoulders of an athlete.

“What…what are you doing here?” Max coughed, fist at his mouth.

“They’re here to see me,” Mom replied. The smoke came from inside her, like the cigarettes burned in her gut. “Where’s your friend?”

“She’s…at home.” Max choked, throat on fire.

“Do tell her to stop by,” Mom croaked. “We’d love to see her. I’m feeling so much stronger now.”

For two days, his mom grunted and writhed, tossed and turned. Max welcomed her absence, and Vera sounded relieved. The sleep gave them moments of peace, along with time before her parents got home. Only, now it seemed Mom wasn’t resting at all. It was like she’d undergone a metamorphosis.

She. Was. Smoking.

“Who are you people?” Max gagged, eyes squinting from the gritty air.

“Friends,” the girl replied, rising to her feet. She was maybe five feet tall if Max was being generous, and she looked like someone he could be friends with. Yet she’d just been kneeling for his mother.

“Get out of my house,” he ordered.

“Oh, don’t be rude,” his mother scolded. No, that wasn’t his mother.

“Don’t tell me what to do. This is my house.”

His mom puffed her chest, standing tall with an odd expression, a familiar expression. “Actually, Maxie-boy, it’s my house.”

That was the voice of his father.

Time stopped.

His body was prepared for a blow, but not this. It was like preparing for an atomic bomb—there was nothing you could do, total destruction was inevitable. He heaved over in pain.

“Hey, Max, did you hear the one about the restaurant on the moon? It has great food, but no atmosphere!” The body let out a deep belly laugh that Max knew could be heard through the entire house, because he’d heard it before. For ten years, he lived with that laugh.

How could she?

Tears pricked at his eyes. He clutched his stomach, his insides, his every fiber to keep from unraveling onto the hardwood floors.

“Whatsa matta, Maxie-boy? You don’t like my jokes no more?” The accent was thick and the conversation real, like they’d had it before, many times.

“Stop. Just stop.” The agony in his voice couldn’t be helped.

“She’s not trying to hurt you. She’s trying to show you,” the girl said in a let-me-put-a-Band-Aid-on-that tone.

No. She didn’t get to talk to him right now. Max let go of his waist.

“Your soul is a manifestation of your existence that lives on in the universe. She sounds like your father, because it is your father. It’s his eternal force. She’s offering a gift,” she continued.

Max stood upright.

“Listen to the chick. She’s a smart one, that girl,” the voice of his father said through his mother’s lips. And she looked like she wanted to wink.

“Get out,” Max commanded, his voice strong.

“If you saw what we saw, if you let us explain, you could break free from your pain….” The stranger clasped his palms, pleading.