Covering her face with her hands, Rose mumbles, “Stop telling yourself this story. This is an awful story. Tell yourself a good story about the kittens being taken to a nice farm in the country where they can chase mice. No. Stop the stories. No more stories.” She breathes in. This is here. This is now. There are no cats here and now. That is the truth; anything else is just an empty story to frighten or reassure herself. What happened to Honey Cat and Laura Lei will come clear at the appropriate moment.

Rose finds herself in space—she is at 87 Applegarth Street, Charlotte, NC. She needs to find herself in time. Leaping off the bed, she staggers, then catches herself on the doorframe. This body is frail. Holding on to the rail, she carefully descends the stairs. On the kitchen counter are her iPad and iPhone, both dead. Too tired to stand, she plugs her lone charger cord into a baseboard outlet and sits cross-legged on the floor, the iPad open.

Her email is clogged with ads. She begins to delete, enjoying the delusion that she can impose order on chaos. Finally there are only four left. Two are from Greene and Associates. Rose has no memory of that firm, but the subject line reads HDennis Will. Rose opens the first, sent the previous day.

Greene and Associates, reads the email, was Miller and Associates when you and Mr. Dennis did your estate planning. When Mr. Miller passed, Alma Greene inherited the firm. Miller was the family lawyer. When Izzy got sick, she and Flynn used him to draw up their will. After Daniel’s father-in-law remarried, he went to Miller to change his will to accommodate his new circumstances.

Mrs. Dennis could you please make an appointment re: Mr. Dennis’s bequests.

The second email says much the same thing, adding that Rose and Alma Greene Esq. met when Ms. Greene was a paralegal. Rose remembers. She marks both “Save as New” and moves on.

The next few are from distant friends she is vaguely in communication with.

Four emails in six weeks. So few.

Rose opens the old mail file. Most are from Marion.

“Marion,” Rose whispers as memories deluge her, buffeting her nerves and inundating her bones until her hands shake so much, she folds them in her lap lest she knock over the iPad.

Two little girls in swimsuits and red cowboy hats, standing in an inflatable wading pool holding hands; two girls, one towheaded, one darker, peeking from between the ears of two kittens, making little paws wave for the camera. Two green fairies in tights and leotards, wings of green netting; two teenagers driving four hundred miles to college in a beat-up green station wagon named Sherman. Two women standing up at each other’s weddings. Two women helping each other pick up the pieces after divorce. Two old women laughing so hard, the shoppers at Belk’s avoid them.