“Tummo is real,” he said. “I’ve just never taken it all the way. I haven’t been doing this all that long, you know. I’m just some guy.” He put his hands in his pockets, and smiled, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was saying. I didn’t contradict him. I didn’t ask him why he didn’t tell us the truth from the beginning. I didn’t need to. I knew what Serena was offering.

When I left the garden, I walked down to the koi pond, thinking I might sit for a while, or kneel and let the jeweled fish suck on my fingers. I needed to think. But when I approached, I found that Janet was already there, stretched out on the muddy bank amid the nettles. I noticed, seeing her from that angle, that her roots were growing in, that signature purple finally admitting to being not of her, not entirely, not originally. The effect was of someone wearing an inexpertly attached wig, the glue peeling and stretching. She was showing her seams. She was not yet, but almost, exposed. Despite the fact that she too had been eating again, she seemed even further diminished, as if boiled down to her essential parts, all marrow.

She didn’t notice me, and as I watched, she pushed herself forward and began to drink from the pond. She slapped the water into her face, letting it splatter her skinny chest. When she dunked her head in, the purple spreading out, I quietly turned and left her there.

Later, I woke in the middle of the night, needing to pee, and went into the bathroom to find Laurel in the tub. I said her name. She didn’t move. I came to the edge, and tried to stop myself from looking down at her; in the stillness the water was perfectly clear. She ignored me. I put a hand in the water to disturb it, a way of touching her without touching her, and found that it was cold.

“Laurel,” I said again.

“What?” she said at last, her voice drawn up into its haughtiest register, the one she’d used with me the very first time we’d met. It made me sad to hear it, nostalgic even.

“The water’s cold,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. She looked down. She began, silently, to cry.

I knelt by the tub. But she wouldn’t answer me, wouldn’t explain, wouldn’t get out of the cold bath. Finally, I said I was going to wake up Janet.