“Uh, thanks,” Vista said. “I’m a bit surprised by that.”

“By all accounts, and I’ll stress that I’ve seen people champing at the bit for chances to give their accounting, you’re a capable young woman, Vista. Don’t devalue yourself or reduce yourself down.”

“That kind of means a lot. Thank you. I kind of wish my parents picked up on that sort of thing.”

“Your parents are asshats,” Carol Dallon said.

“Wha?” Vista made a sound, like she wasn’t sure how to respond.

“They’re your family. Love them unconditionally, stay by them through thick and thin. But I think you should listen to the people who sing your praises, not the people with their heads halfway up their asses, when it comes to valuing yourself. Any parent with a lick of sense would be proud.”

I looked over at Crystal, who had gone quiet, a little introspective or caught up in her thoughts.

My mother was maybe a little less filtered, with the head injury. It was hard to say. Not in the sense she was drunk or impulsive, though that image of her crying last night might stay in my mind’s eye until the day I died… but that the things that made her her were less obstructed by things like deeper considerations or context. We’d launched into this from a conversation about Crystal feeling abandoned by her mom and my mom had found her way to coaching Vista and being a bit of the mom Vista had maybe needed but never had.

“You were saying? About one-dimensional personalities?” I asked Crystal.

Crystal came back to the present reality and time, stirred from those deep thoughts. She met my eyes. “My mom—that woman. I have no idea what to call her. She felt that way. I didn’t want to spend most of the time talking about war stories, but we ended up talking about war stories. She didn’t used to be like that.”

“I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, it seems like they can get back to who they were. It’s just going to take time.”

Crystal nodded, smiling a sad smile at me. Her fingers adjusted her hair over her bad eye.

“We missed you being there, Victoria,” my mother said.

“Orders are orders,” Crystal said, more tense and defensive about my departure than I’d expected. “Can we ask, Victoria?”

“Valkyrie brought Clockblocker and Kid Win back too. She wanted me to get Vista and take her to see them.”

“How are they? Was it a good reunion?”

“It was nice,” Vista said. “Weird, a bit one-dimensional, and that dimension wasn’t the one I would have said seemed ‘Clockblocker’. But I got to say some stuff I’d been holding onto. So it felt cathartic.”