In the bathroom, there is a small medicine cabinet over the sink with a mirrored door. I swing it open and look inside, spinning all the pill bottles around so I can read their labels. I have brought my phone with me just for this. Anything I don’t recognize, I google. There are some antibiotics, a muscle relaxant, and a few Vicodin. When I get to the Haldol and the Depakote, I feel my shoulders sag with relief. In addition, there’s an old half-full prescription for Lithium, one for Risperdal, and a couple of antidepressants. The fact that there are meds present at all is a welcome sign.

The room is equipped with a claw-foot tub like you see in the movies and an overhead shower. I draw a bath and climb in, settling deep into its cradle like I am curling up in the warm belly of a friendly beast. I pull the curtain and clutch my knees, enjoying the dark. Even with the water, the heavy tub, and the shower curtain between us, I can feel her in the apartment with me. And with her, all the memories and emotions begin to surface. If they rose one at a time, I might be able to manage them. But they beat against my mind like a many-headed hydra, a mounting wall of panic that will eventually topple and wash over me, dragging everything out with the tide when it recedes.

As I am climbing into the bed, I see she is back in the kitchen again, cleaning refrigerator drawers and shelves at the sink, and then slipping them back in.

“It’s late,” I tell her. “Can’t you do that in the morning?”

She glances up at me, a sponge in one hand. “No can do, kiddo. Tomorrow’s a workday. I gotta be up and at ’em early if I want to get my spot.”

I calculate what day of the week it is quickly. “But tomorrow is Saturday.”

“Right,” she chimes. “The best day for my line of work.”

And here we are, at the threshold of another question mark, an empty thought bubble I’ve been waiting to fill. “Which is?”

“I read cards down in Jackson Square,” she supplies, like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

She has always been into the fringe scene—cards, crystals, drugs—whatever is the opposite of what everyone in the normal world is doing. She is a magnet for weird. But I assumed she was limiting that to her free time. That her job was something definable with regular hours, a manager, and a printed check with a stub. This takes me by surprise even after spending ten years curled up around a tarot deck as my inheritance. I feel the fireflies of hope in my heart go out one by one. Goodbye, New Hampshire. Goodbye, college degree. Goodbye, stable future.