Bette’s eyes filled with ice. Juno was familiar with that look, but not from Bette; Bette had always been a little lamb. Now she suddenly seemed like something else. Had Kregger called to tell Bette that Juno was getting out and to keep an eye out for her? Of course he had; Juno knew Kregger just as well as he knew her. She took a little step back, which seemed to embolden the new Bette.

“Those aren’t your boys, they’re Kregger’s. You had your chance with them, Juno, and you blew it. Leave them be, they’ve started over.” And then Bette shut the door in Juno’s face.

Juno had a key to Bette’s house once; a just-in-case key that she held on to in case they ever got locked out, or Juno needed to go inside to water a plant while they were on vacation. The pain Juno felt in that moment was unbearable; they were her boys. She’d raised them. They’d left Alaska after Kregger’s ex-wife, Marnie, overdosed in her apartment in Albuquerque. A neighbor had found the toddlers, both wearing sagging diapers and wandering the corridors of the building. The worst part was, they hadn’t even been crying; that’s what broke Juno’s heart the most. She and Kregger had taken the first flight back to New Mexico with no thoughts of returning to Alaska. They had sons now, and Juno had taken the boys willingly—of course she would raise them, of course she would love them as her own.

The boys had had nothing to do with her mistake; she just hadn’t been thinking about them. That’s how it always was when it came to mistakes; no one was doing any thinking. During Dale’s freshman year of high school, Juno had an affair with his swim coach. She could say all of the regular things about how “it just happened” and how “she wasn’t that type of person,” but…if you did it, sorry, you were that type of person.

His name was Chad Allan, and the first time he’d walked into Juno’s office for therapy it was with his wife, Julianna. They all startled when they recognized each other, and then, somewhat awkwardly, sat down. Juno went by her maiden name professionally, and the Allans had been a referral, so none of them had realized they knew each other until the day of the appointment. They had sons in the same grade; Chad and Julianna’s son Michael was not an athlete and drifted toward the arts, separating the boys into two circles.