Even Crystal had flinched at the barbeque last night, and Amy had taken baths with Crystal, once upon a time.

Still hurt.

“Sorry for taking up your time,” Amy said.

“Not at all. I did invite you to talk. I just can’t comment, as I said.”

Amy nodded, looking down at her hands. She’d wanted to maintain a connection to Victoria. Sun for the past on one arm, for Glory Girl. The then-present at her hands, red. And then the future on the other arm, the golden-haired girl. The fall, the rise, a promise to herself. A promise to herself, that she would make things right, and that things would be alright again. Touching Glaistig Uaine had been a moment that had convinced her there was no way that she would remain in the Birdcage. Not if things came to a head in her lifetime. And they had.

“Mark Dallon, on one of his visits, made a remark to me that I made a note of. It’s in a file in a cabinet somewhere on Earth Bet somewhere, no doubt half-buried and soaked in water,” Jessica said.

Amy glanced at the woman.

“He said he didn’t like therapy. That it hadn’t done anything for him.”

Amy found herself nodding in acknowledgement before she caught herself.

“Carol, if I remember right, was made to attend therapy for a time but abandoned it once she was eighteen.”

“I see what you’re getting at. She abandoned it because she had Victoria, just for context.”

“You talked about the influence they had on Victoria. Didn’t they influence you? Is it at all possible you picked up prejudices as a consequence of how you were raised?”

“Not when they were barely parents to me,” Amy replied, her voice harder.

Jessica nodded, her expression momentarily sad.

Because pity. Amy wished that pity was for the right reasons. She felt the urge to make her final appeal, a hail-mary attempt to convince this woman that Carol had described as so important to Victoria. Because even if Jessica Yamada was a bad therapist, and Amy wasn’t sure now, she was important for other reasons.

“I’m not a bad person.”

“If this is another appeal to tell Victoria anything—”

“No,” Amy said. “It’s not. Me to you.”

“Okay.”

“If I was a bad person, this would have all been… so much easier,” Amy explained. “You know, it’s like conspiracy theories, where someone’s on the street corner, and they’re telling you the government’s after them, CIA, FBI, PRT, there are agendas there’s these convoluted reasons… and you just want to ask, ‘why are you so important they’d focus on you?’”

“I’m sure they would be able to give you reasons. It’s not so simple as that, Amy.”

“Frustrating,” Amy said, softly. “Sad.”

“It really is. It’s a hard reality. I’m not sure I follow your train of thought, though.”