This what you meant, Mama.

Clear as day to me, my girl.

As Lady Mae walked the crescent road toward the square, she saw Arbuckle up ahead sitting by himself on a bench. He was waiting for her even though she had told him to meet her in the square. She paused, smoothed her hair, and tucked the stray ends behind her ears. He had only one suitcase between his legs and looked in the direction of the courthouse. What would she say to him after all this time? That each time she’d dreamed of him it was nearly the same; the two of them standing in a field of nasturtium, the red petals brushing against their limbs? Would she say that she had held him still so as to not crush the tender leaves and stems, and that in doing so their lips came close enough to feel the heat of the other?

Her throat seized as if it were trying to wrap itself around her loneliness, for she had not allowed herself to think of the emptiness his absence left in its wake. Because then what? He was gone then, and though she knew that he would return immediately at her words come back and why’d you go, she did not wish to be the thing for which he relented. She’d been angry for a long time; he’d left her, or so that was what she’d understood to be true after he’d gone. But since the fire, her anger had diminished. She was not surprised by this, but what she found, what was unaccounted for, was that the other feeling—the one she purposely hadn’t named—unraveled the tangled mass inside her just enough.

Maybe I won’t need them no more, Mama.

Careful what you let go of, my girl.

“Arbuckle!” she called.

His head turned in her direction, and when his eyes met hers, a relief washed over her so mightily that her legs went weak. Her heart leaped, and her stomach pitched. It was not just Arbuckle in front of her; it was her childhood, her own remains she thought long gone sitting and waiting for her. It was her own existence, and it burned her eyes bright. It was that she’d been there, and he hadn’t. It was what she saw that he knew but wouldn’t say directly. It was all of it, a deafening cyclone of madness that engulfed her there in the square in the late afternoon sun.

They walked toward each other with trepidation, as if the other might disappear should they move too quickly. When they neared, their eyes took in the other’s. It was Arbuckle after all, the same boy that had watched her mother burn beside her. He was only slightly different—taller, more muscular. But the crease in his brow had remained, and though the scars from his father so long ago had faded, she could see them, knew which was from a fist, which from a glass bottle, a wooden beam. To Lady Mae he was as handsome as could be, more than she remembered. She put her hand to her stomach, took in a deep sip of breath. What would he think of her in the early evening light? Five and a half years ago, she’d been a child. Would he rustle her hair as he used to, tease her when she ran after the chickens? Perhaps he too had thought of her long into the dark night, remembering how their shoulders touched as they sat on the sofa, how close their hands remained during lessons.