Weeks later, she stopped by her bank to get change for a PTA fund-raiser. Sitting behind one of the desks was Troy, wearing a dark suit and a plastic name badge. She tried to confirm the name on the tag without him noticing her staring but was unable to.

This time her hands did not shake at all. She actually felt fine, but she tasted blood. Without even noticing, she had been biting her lower lip so hard that the tooth had broken through. She wiped the blood away and walked past him with her withdrawal slip, not looking at him. Because she wasn’t looking at him, she couldn’t see if he was looking at her.

Just a few days after that, she and Josh went to the movies. This was a monthly tradition that went back to when he was seven. He had been acting glum, taking on oozing, gloppy forms that made a mess of the furniture and carpet, and asking her a lot of questions about his dad and where he had gone. She had been alternately terrified and exasperated by the moody creature that had appeared in place of her little boy, and she announced that, as a special treat, they would go to the movies.

That night at the movies was the first good night they had had in weeks. She hadn’t been sure what to see and just asked at the ticket counter for whatever popular children’s movie was playing. The joyful glow of being somewhere together and feeling like they were both on the same team had outshone the silly antics of the funny characters in the kids’ movie (No Country for Old Men) up on the screen. They had left the theater, him walking upright, with non-oozing legs, and holding her hand with a human palm and fingers. He did not ask about his father again for months.

And so started their monthly attempt to recapture the lightness of that first night. Mostly it was good. Sometimes, especially lately, she had to remind him to keep his form short, and free of any broad wings or smoke emitters that might obstruct other moviegoers’ views. He would always do what she said, but not without a lot of sighing and eye-rolling (he almost always took a form with eyes when going to the movies, although he had gone through a period where he preferred the experience of sightless listening).