I’d tell Aaron that I’d freaked out about the fire. And I had. I didn’t want to try and explain how miserable it made me, thinking I’d cast myself out of Viridian’s presence forever. Not that I had any real reason to be there in the first place. Just the ache and the hunger that her poems both awoke and soothed in me. I hardly knew what poetry was, only that it had shaken something loose, the same way music sometimes did, the way it tapped into the messy longings I had that had always embarrassed me, everything that was restless, urgent, and unknown, that I’d pushed away.

And if I was honest, the misery of the last few hours was another kind of extreme sensation and was a thing I valued.

My mom had to work the next day, so she was up early. I heard the hair dryer running in the bathroom while I was still in bed. “Good morning, sunshine,” she greeted me, once I reached the kitchen. “I don’t know if you eat a big breakfast nowadays.”

I said that coffee and toast would be fine. I sat at the table and watched my mom cross and recross the room, gathering all the things she needed for her day. She was wearing a black sundress with red trim and a necklace and earrings set made of red beads. On somebody else it would have looked too matchy-matchy, but on my mom, it was smart and put together. She saw me watching her. “What?”

“Nothing. You always look so nice. I wish I did.”

“We could go shopping. I could help you pick some outfits.”

“Outfits for what? I don’t ever need to look fancy.” I thought of my clothes from yesterday, still in a smoky heap in the truck.

“They say to dress for the job you want. So if you don’t want to be a lumberjack or a field hand—”

“I get your point.”

When she was ready to leave, she bent down and kissed me. She smelled powdery, fragrant. “It doesn’t matter so much what you end up doing, honestly. Not to me. You just do it the best you possibly can.”

She was my mother, nobody was ever going to love me more than she did. But she didn’t entirely believe in me.

There wasn’t any reason to stay once my mom left, so I got myself together and headed back home. The house was empty, except for Batman, who rolled over on his back for me to rub his tummy. Aaron was at work. He hadn’t left a note or anything for me, which was both good and bad. I mean, no love letter, but no good-bye letter either.