Small Sanctuaries

Erin had never liked the word “sunbathing.” It conjured images of passivity, of being cooked like a slab of lunchmeat. But there was no alternative for what she was doing: a five-foot-six mint-green nude woman with her back to the pool, shoes on her feet, lying flat and hungry as a leaf. Photosynthesis wasn’t just a word, anymore. It was a need, down to the cell.

She’d claimed the best lounger, the one with the new cushion and a clear angle to the southwestern sun, just after lunch. There was a bottle of water sweating at her side, and she’d rolled up a hand towel to pad the back of her neck. This was optimal, and she wasn’t going to waste it reading a book or letting her mind spiral on hypotheticals. It was nice to be in the sun without worrying about sunburn.

Except her mind was already spiraling.

The thing about being part-plant was that you couldn’t ever turn off the undercurrent of arousal. Every square inch of her tingled with low-grade hunger, a pull for light, for heat, for a kind of completeness she couldn’t name. It was, on good days, like being in a state of mild arousal; on bad days, it was like needing Andy inside her to be able to function for a while.

Emily arrived just before the hour, padding across the deck in her Converse shoes, her hair loose in a gold-pink waterfall that barely (but always) covered her as she walked. She eyed the loungers with the tactical squint of a person who had, at some point, staked her self-worth on never sitting in a cold or wet patch. She hovered, appraising, then selected the spot next to Erin’s and plopped down with a contented sigh.

They both lay there for a minute, silent, performing the standard scan of surroundings for glass shards, sand, or—Erin’s personal nemesis—those little burs that somehow made it onto every surface despite the daily sweeps.

Emily crossed her ankles, then un-crossed them, looking up at the sky. “You ever think about what it’ll be like, when we get home?” she said, not loud, not soft.

Erin, eyes closed, let the words settle on her skin like the light. “Only every minute I’m not trying not to think about it,” she said. She didn’t move, but the tension in her calf muscles betrayed her.

Emily rolled onto her side. Her hair, perfectly cooperative as always, fanned over her enlarged breasts and flat stomach. She looked at Erin, the way someone might inspect a newly-discovered species in the wild.

“You don’t miss it?” Emily asked.

Erin squinted up at the sun, as if addressing it. “The world? Not really. Maybe pieces. Coffee shops where they get your name wrong. Real dirt under your nails. The way the lake smells at five in the morning, if you catch the right wind.”

Emily nodded, but her face was wistful. “I miss the subway. Like, I hated it—everyone does—but I also miss it. The feeling of being part of a crowd that couldn’t care less about you.” She kicked her heel against the lounger, making a thud. “Here, even when you’re alone, you’re not alone.”

Erin considered that. She watched a pale blue dragonfly hover near the pool’s edge, wings flicking so fast the air buzzed. “There are worse things than being seen,” she said.

Emily turned over, lying flat on her stomach. The way her hair draped over her back looked intentional, but Erin knew it wasn’t—Emily’s transformation guaranteed that she could walk through Times Square naked and not show more than a flash of cheek, unless she wanted to. Erin envied that kind of luck.

Emily was quiet for a moment, then said, “I’ve been thinking about Reality Adjustments.”

Erin opened one eye. “Yeah?”

“Like, whether we’d need them. To go outside. To just—“ She made a small gesture, vague and tired. “Live.”

Erin closed her eye again. “We would,” she said. “Unless we want to spend the rest of our lives in the house.” A beat. “I’ve been thinking about it too. More than I’d like.”

Emily didn’t answer right away. The dragonfly moved off over the water, and the pool went still.

A soft footfall and the faintest snick of sand on tile signaled the approach of a third. Katherine, bare as the day she was trapped in the painting, strolled across the deck. She moved with an ease that made every motion look like a secret handshake with gravity. Her feet, still wet from the ocean, left little haloes on the flagstones. She paused, glanced at the two of them, and gave them a little happy wave. Then, after a beat of calculation, she dropped onto the adjacent lounger, folding her legs with crisp, practiced elegance. She looked like she belonged there—maybe like she’d belonged nowhere else, until now.

Erin lifted her hand in a silent hey. Emily, always more effusive, grinned and said, “Good afternoon, beautiful,” like it was an inside joke.

Katherine offered a tiny, theatrical bow of her head, then leaned back, eyes closed, as if to maximize exposure to the sun. In one hand she clutched a piece of green sea glass, rolling it between her thumb and index finger. After a minute, she opened her eyes and studied the other two, her gaze bright and curious.

Emily broke the silence, propping herself up on her elbows. “We were just talking about Reality Adjustments,” she said. “You know, the whole—‘everyone treats you like it’s normal to be naked, or green, or have tails, or whatever else’—thing.” She looked at Erin. “You first.”

Erin exhaled through her nose, then stretched her arms overhead. “I’ve been thinking about nothing else since Arabella dropped that bomb,” she said. She eyed Katherine. “You’d blend in fine. Most people would just think you’re French or something.”

Katherine smiled, one-sided, but her eyes sparkled with mischief. She held the sea glass up to the sun, letting it cast a green spot on her thigh, then let her hand flop back onto the chair.

Erin nodded at her. “Exactly,” she said, “French.”

Emily’s smile twisted. “I keep imagining myself on the F train, completely naked, and everyone around me just… not seeing it. Like, my hair covers, but I know I’m naked. It’d be like living in a surrealist painting. Or one of those weird performance art installations that’s supposed to challenge your sense of reality, but mostly just makes you uncomfortable.”

Erin laughed, short and low. “That’s called ‘Tuesday’ in Chicago.”

Katherine, eyes still closed, covered her mouth with her hand, shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

Emily laughed, too, and caught herself. “Sorry. I shouldn’t—”

But Erin cut her off. “You should. It’s funny. I mean, it’s horrifying, but it’s funny.” She sat up, stretching her spine until it cracked. “I have three problems,” she said. She ticked them off on her fingers: “One, the nudity, which is whatever. Two, the fact that I get wet—visibly—every time Andy looks at me, which is not whatever. And three, my skin is basically the color of a mint popsicle. I’d need a Reality Adjustment for each, just to go to the grocery store and not get arrested or mistaken for produce.” She squinted at Katherine. “You ever have that problem?”

Katherine paused, then thought, then shook her head. She mimed running her hands down her sides, then pointed at her face, and did a little swirl at her temple, then mimed talking with her hands—language? Identity? None of them could really tell, but the point landed: she’d never been seen as a person for the last fourteen years, only as a painting.

Erin softened, just a touch. “Yeah, I guess it’s not so bad compared to spending half your life on a wall.” She looked at Emily, who’d gone thoughtful again. “What about you? Do you even care?”

Emily pursed her lips. “I mean, yeah. I didn’t, but then it became part of me. I got used to being watched, but not really seen, if that makes sense? It’s only recently that I started wanting to be seen for me and not for…” She gestured, helpless, at her own body. “For the art installation.”

Katherine, after a moment, reached over and set the piece of sea glass in Emily’s palm. Emily blinked, then smiled and held it up, as if to admire the color from every angle. She passed it to Erin, who balanced it on the back of her hand, then flicked it into the air and caught it with a practiced, reflexive movement.

They lay in a row, all technically nude, none of it awkward. The sun was merciless, but the air moved with just enough breeze to make it bearable.

After a while, Emily said, “You ever wonder what the world will look like, once we’re out?”

Katherine sat up, hugging her knees to her chest, and stared at the far horizon as if she could see it. She tilted her head, considering, then shrugged, a slow, elegant loop of the shoulders.

Erin traced a bead of water down her thigh, then said, “I think about it all the time, but I don’t have an answer. Maybe it’s different for everyone. Like, I used to want to fix everything. To fix Andy, mostly, but also me, and sometimes the whole damn world. Now I just want to…” She hesitated, then made a face. “That’s the problem. I don’t know what I want.”

Emily gave her a sidelong look. “Maybe that’s what you want,” she said. “To not know, and to not have to fix it.”

Erin snorted. “You’re a real philosopher, you know that?”

Emily spread her hands, as if to say: Who, me? “I just like thinking out loud.”

Katherine watched them both, hands folded under her chin, her face an open book. She pantomimed taking a photo, framing the scene, then set her hands down and nodded once, as if to say: remember this.

The conversation shifted again, winding through old stories about high school (Emily’s first encounter with a security guard at the Met, Erin’s legendary streaking incident at the UIC campus, Katherine’s single time at a gallery opening before everything changed). They compared notes on the best and worst places to be naked, the merits of various sunscreens, and, inevitably, the complications of intimacy when you’re never more than a heartbeat away from full arousal.

At one point, Emily said, “I think I could get used to it. The nudity, I mean. If everyone treated it like normal, I’d just be a weirdo with cool hair. But the idea of not being able to hide anything? That’s what gets me.”

Erin was quiet for a beat, then said, “I used to think it was the hiding that kept me safe. But maybe it was the thing that kept me stuck.”

Katherine nodded. She pointed at herself, then mimed opening a door, then spreading her hands, palms up, as if to say: now I get to be out there, too.

The three of them lay back, the silence thick but comfortable. A Mildred came by, wordless, and left a small pitcher of ice water on the table between the loungers, along with a bowl of fresh mango slices. Erin grinned, then took a piece, biting into it with the satisfaction of a person who had finally gotten the little victory she’d wanted.

After a while, Emily said, “So what are you going to do, after this is over?”

Erin, without missing a beat, said, “Go home. Sleep for a week. Eat a pizza. Fuck Andy silly.”

Katherine clapped, the sound sharp and bright. She reached over and patted Erin’s shoulder, then looked at Emily, expectant.

Emily hesitated, then said, “I want to go to a bar and not have to worry about someone taking a picture of me. I want to paint a mural in broad daylight, and maybe kiss Andy on a rooftop, and see if I can make it through a day without thinking about who’s watching.”

Katherine pantomimed painting, her hand moving in broad, arcing strokes. Then she pointed at herself, then at the sea, then at the horizon. She wasn’t going anywhere, not really, but she would never stop moving, never stop looking.

Erin grinned. “The three of us need to stick together. Andy's Naked Weirdos. Team Skin, right?”

Emily giggled. “Team Skin.” Katherine nodded eagerly.

The three of them watched the sun climb, watched the light change from gold to white to blinding. They sweated and shared the water and the fruit, and talked about nothing at all and everything at once.

---

The Inner Gardens felt less like a garden and more like a giant, well-oiled machine that had evolved to create privacy out of nowhere: twisting paths, fountains that muffled footsteps, shrubs tall enough to break the sight lines in three directions. If you wanted to be alone, you could always find a way.

That’s why Myra liked the bench. It sat half-buried in a patch of reeds and wildflowers, far enough from the main path that even the Mildreds rarely passed by. She stretched her legs out, both tails fanned behind her, and just sat—listening to the birds, mapping the emotional static that shimmered through the air whenever anyone was near. Sometimes she closed her eyes and tried to imagine the exact moment the world would start to make sense again, but mostly she just let herself exist.

She heard Riley before she saw her—first the slight impact of boots on flagstone, then the sudden flare of intent that cut through the garden’s low-level contentment. Riley radiated a different kind of presence: focused, a little electric, the kind of mood that made small animals freeze rather than scatter.

Myra waited for her to say something, but Riley just stood there for a second, then eased herself down on the far end of the bench. She didn’t ask if it was taken. She didn’t ask anything at all.

They sat like that for a while, the only contact the rustle of Myra’s tails as the breeze picked up and set the fur in motion. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was charged, like two people standing at opposite ends of a see-saw, neither willing to be the first to lean.

It was Myra who broke. “She asked me to share the night,” she said, quiet but not fragile. “Laura. After the masquerade. Not as a… not as a prize, or a routine, but because she wanted to show me she meant it. That I was forgiven.”

Riley absorbed this without turning her head. “You believed her?”

Myra’s tails gave a little twitch. “I think so. I didn’t at first, but then it felt real. She made it real.”

Riley traced her finger along the edge of the bench, watching the grain of the wood. “Laura doesn’t do things halfway,” she said, a little smile ghosting across her mouth. “If she forgave you, you’d know. If she didn’t, you’d know that too.”

Myra nodded, even though she could sense that Riley wasn’t really asking for a response. The sun crept across the grass, illuminating the little flecks of pollen that floated everywhere. It made the place look enchanted, or haunted, depending on the angle.

Riley said, after a pause, “Did it help?” There was no sarcasm, just a gentle curiosity, as if she were checking on the progress of an old wound.

Myra considered this, chewing it over. “I think it did,” she said. “It’s hard to tell. I’m still me, but it’s not the same kind of me as before.” She looked at the flowers, at the clouds. “I used to think if I was just good enough, if I worked hard enough, I’d be forgiven. But that’s not how it works. You can’t earn it. It has to be given.”

Riley looked straight ahead, then said, “I always envied people who could believe in that.”

Myra gave her a sidelong glance. “You don’t?”

Riley shook her head, just once. “No. Not really. I always figured you did the thing, you paid for it, and that was it. Like balancing a checkbook. No plus, no minus. Just done.”

There was something sharp in her voice, but it wasn’t anger. More like a refusal to be tricked by hope. Myra felt the heat of it, the sincerity.

“You don’t ever wish it could be different?” Myra asked.

Riley let out a dry laugh. “Wishing’s for people who have something left to lose.” She looked at Myra, eyes bright and unblinking. “If you’re here, it’s because you already lost it once.”

That landed harder than Myra expected. It wasn’t cruelty—Riley wasn’t cruel—but it was the kind of truth that bit down and held on.

She said, “I never knew where I came from. Not really. My birth certificate is a mess. I spent so much time imagining what my parents might have been like that I had to stop. It got in the way of being a person. Maybe that’s where it all started. Moving from foster family to foster family makes it hard not to believe you did something wrong.”

Riley said, “I don’t even have a certificate. Adopted as a newborn. All I know is they didn’t want me, or they couldn’t keep me, or someone decided I’d be better off elsewhere. So I went with that.” She flexed her hands, then relaxed them. “Sometimes I wonder what I’d do, if I ever found out who my real parents were.”

Myra nodded. “Me too,” she said.

Riley smiled. They let the silence build again. It didn’t feel empty, more like a field after harvest—stripped to essentials, waiting for what came next. The sun moved behind a cloud, then out again, washing everything in white.

Riley said, eventually, “Did you ever try to find out? Your parents, I mean.”

Myra thought about it. “No. I almost did, once. I filled out the paperwork, but then I threw it away. I realized I was just going to end up disappointed. Better to keep the blank than fill it with the wrong thing. Now… I don’t know, maybe I want to know.”

Riley considered this. “I used to think not knowing was the worst part,” she said. “But I think maybe it’s better than knowing and wishing you didn’t.”

They sat with that, the bench creaking slightly as the air shifted. Myra’s tails curled in and out, slow and steady.

“Is that why you came out here?” Riley asked, voice softer than before. “To think about it?”

Myra shook her head, smiling faintly. “No. I came because it’s quiet. People’s emotions are all over the place, and I wanted to be somewhere I didn’t have to try so hard to ignore them.”

Riley snorted, then grinned. She looked at Myra’s swishing tails. “You know, they’re good tails,” she said, “for what it’s worth.”

Myra couldn’t help but laugh, a short, startled sound. “You don’t have to say that,” she said, “but thank you.”

“I do,” Riley insisted, deadpan. “You have the best tails on the island, and anyone who disagrees can take it up with me.” There was a mock-serious edge to the words, but Myra could feel the real compliment behind them.

They sat a little closer after that, and the silence shifted. It wasn’t so much a lack of conversation as a shared understanding that words were optional, not required. The sun crept down the backs of their necks, and the world outside the garden didn’t matter for a while.

After a time, Myra said, “You ever think about what you’d do, once you get out?”

Riley looked at the sky, then said, “I’d keep doing what I do now. Teaching. Writing. Helping kids that nobody else can reach.” She hesitated, then added, “I might try to fall in love again. But only if it was real.”

Myra nodded. “With Andy?”

Riley blushed with red embarrassment. “No! No, what? I… I mean… Fuck it, you know what I mean.”

Myra smiled. “I understand. I think I’d do the same. Try to help people. Go back to medicine, but without killing myself this time.”

Riley’s voice was a little rough. “You already do help people,” she said, “you just don’t give yourself credit for it.”

They let that be the last word, and watched the shadows stretch across the grass. The bench creaked again as Riley shifted, and Myra could sense the warmth radiating off her—steady, reliable, the kind of presence that made it okay to stop searching for the next thing to say.

For a long time, neither of them moved. They watched the sun drift, the light changing, the world slowing down just enough that every breath felt like it might last forever.

---

The Suite always felt too big when it was just Laura inside. The windows stretched wall-to-wall, but today she’d left the curtains half-drawn, letting the light slash across the rug and turn the place into a chessboard of shadow. Both of her lay on the red sectional, knees drawn up, watching the sky. The world felt staged, as if someone had loaded a memory of comfort into a simulator and dialed the color down by half.

She’d been sitting for hours, not reading, not even thinking. Just letting the air move. When the elevator’s chime sounded, she ignored it. But then it repeated, and repeated again. Laura uncoiled, padded barefoot to the door, and opened it not because she cared, but because it was easier than listening to the bell go off until it became part of her blood pressure.

Norah was there, in a powder-blue skirt and jacket, her shoes—today’s were navy, perfectly shined—already in “ready to depart” formation. Her hair was pulled back tighter than usual. She took in the scene with a single sweep—the dark room, the half-drawn curtains, the curl in Laura’s spine—and her eyes settled somewhere just above Laura’s left shoulder, as if she’d already rehearsed what she was going to say and needed to deliver it before she lost her nerve.

She said, “Haven’t seen you around and figured you were here. I’m going to the Pixel Palace. You’re coming with me.” Her voice was neither invitation nor threat. It was simply the truth, stated plainly, by someone who was not particularly good at this and knew it. Laura found herself momentarily outmaneuvered by the sheer bluntness.

Laura blinked in stereo. “I’m not in the mood,” she said, more a reflex than a real protest.

Norah grinned, taking in Laura’s exhaustion, visible on her faces. “I didn’t ask,” she said.

They stood there for a beat, the only sound the hum of the elevator, and then, in perfect silence, Laura went to find her shoes.

The Pixel Palace lived up to the name. The floors were a shock of electric blue, the arcade machines jammed in at every angle, the air thick with a sweet film of popcorn and the ozone tang of overstressed circuitry. The lights pulsed and cycled, giving the entire hall the quality of a nightclub at noon.

Norah strode in with a confidence that made sense only if you’d already done a dry run of the games, mapped the best path to the token machine, and pre-scouted the location of every trash can in the building. She peeled off toward the racing cabinets, scanning the row with a brisk, evaluative glance. Her skirt was a little too tight for comfort, but she moved like a professional—never tottering, never apologizing.

Laura trailed after, not out of need, but because she didn’t have anywhere better to be. She kept the hands of both bodies in her pockets, shoulders hunched, and did not immediately pick a machine.

Norah collected a handful of tokens, chose “Road Rage XIII,” and settled into the seat without fanfare. She adjusted the wheel, tapped the pedals, and ran through the options with mechanical precision. She didn’t invite Laura to play, or even acknowledge that anyone else was there.

Laura wandered, letting the visual noise batter her. The machines all called out, promising tickets, bonus rounds, the chance to be Player of the Week. There were so many ways to be important, so many ways to be crowned a winner if you just put enough tokens in the slot. She found herself at a pinball table—The Twilight Zone—and, on a whim, started a game with one of her bodies.

The first few minutes were aimless. Norah raced, precision movements, never a wasted gesture. Laura let the silver ball clatter and rebound, losing track almost immediately. She had no intention of winning, but a part of her remembered the trick: nudge the machine, not too much, and you could tilt the odds.

She did this, letting her hip check the edge with just enough **** to save the ball from the drain. It felt good, the moment of physical contact. The world didn’t care, but the ball stayed in play.

Norah, a few feet away, never looked up from her screen, but after a moment said, “If you tilt it too far, it’ll lock you out.”

Laura didn’t turn. “That’s the point.”

It went like that for a while. Norah finished the racing game, checked her score, and—seeing it wasn’t the top of the board—immediately put in a token for another round. Laura cycled through three pinball tables, then found herself at a skee-ball lane. She rolled a ball, watched it arc up the ramp, bounce, land in the lowest ring.

She tried again. Better, but not much. After three more tries, she started aiming for the smallest, highest slot, even though it was nearly impossible. She liked the futility of it, the way the machine kept rewarding you for trying and then quietly subtracting all the points that really mattered.

Norah appeared at her side, silent as a shadow. She watched Laura play, arms folded, then said, “You’re using the wrong approach. You need to aim for the second-highest. The probability curve is better.”

Laura rolled a ball, hit a rim, and both bodies grinned, not quite at Norah. “What if I don’t care about the curve?” she said, in stereo.

Norah shrugged. “You’re still playing.”

Laura considered that. She rolled another, missed, then lined up a careful shot. This one hit. The score blinked and reset, and she felt a tiny jolt of satisfaction.

For the first time in hours, she felt awake.

They traded frames for a while, Norah never gloating, Laura never complaining. After ten minutes, it was obvious Norah would win most games, but Laura didn’t care. She watched the balls roll and crash, watched the little victories accumulate and vanish. At the end, Norah let her last ball go wild and it bounced off the lane, landing in Laura’s row.

Laura laughed in stereo. It was not a big sound, but it was sharp and clear. Norah raised her eyebrows, almost smiling.

“What?” Norah said.

“Nothing,” Laura said. “Just—I used to come to a place like this all the time. Smaller, older games, but Andy’s parents would take us there and let us play the whole afternoon. Thought I’d be too old for it, but here I am, still losing to the same kind of girl.”

Norah’s smile flickered, then faded. “Nobody ever wins here,” she said. “That’s the trick. But it’s nice to pretend, for a while.”

They stood together, neither making a move to leave. The lights flashed, the noise pressed in, and for a moment, the world was just the two of them, with no more or less meaning than whatever points they racked up in the system.

Laura said, softly, “You know I don’t want to talk about it, right?”

Norah nodded, not taking her eyes off the machine. “I know.”

“Thank you,” Laura said.

Norah shrugged. “I don’t want to hear about it, anyway.”

They let the silence go on, not awkward but not companionable, either. Just what it was.

Later, at the air hockey tables, Laura merged and played left-handed, letting Norah dominate the match until the score was hopeless, then suddenly switching to her right and launching a streak of perfect, calculated shots. Norah didn’t comment, but her eyes narrowed. She raised her game, and soon they were locked in a tight, brutal series—every point contested, every goal a tiny battle.

They played best of five. Laura won, barely, and the sensation felt strange. Good, but also not hers.

Norah, for her part, just reset the scoreboard. “Rematch?” she said.

Laura smiled. “Always.”

They played again.

By the end of the hour, they were both winded, hands stinging from too many rebounds. They didn’t talk about anything except the game. Norah never once asked Laura what was wrong, and Laura never once tried to say it.

At the exit, Norah said, “Whatever it is, it’ll still be there tomorrow and the day after. But right now, you just beat me at air hockey, and I’m not okay with that.”

Laura looked at her, eyes bright, and for the first time all day, felt almost normal. “You can try again,” she said.

Norah grinned. “I intend to.”

They parted ways at the arcade doors, but Laura found herself standing just outside, looking at the tokens in her hand, the weight of them cool and real. She rolled one over her knuckles, savoring the possibility of the next round, the one after that, and maybe, if she played it right, the one after that.

For a minute, she just let herself stand there, alive in the noise and the neon, grateful to Norah for noticing her.

---

It started, as most of these things did, with a dare: Dawn bet Chloe that she couldn’t make her mother’s besitos de coco recipe without burning at least one batch, and Chloe, affronted, countered that Dawn couldn’t distinguish between baking powder and baking soda even on a good day. What was supposed to be a single tray of cookies metastasized into a sugar-fueled arms race, with three different flavors, two separate ovens in play, and the kitchen running at what Dawn privately called “full Abuela mode.”

By mid-afternoon, the prep counter looked like a war zone: four mixing bowls, at least three open bags of sugar, a small mountain of eggshells, and the kind of powdered flour drift that most people only encountered in crime scene photos. Chloe, hair up in a bright scrunchie and sleeves pushed to her elbows, wielded a wooden spoon like a weapon. Dawn, whose baking style involved more precise measurements and a gentle touch, was nevertheless losing ground in the kitchen’s battle for airspace. The whole room smelled like vanilla, almonds, and scorched coconut.

At the five-minute warning, the hallway filled with the smell of fresh dough and caramelizing sugar. That was all it took. Katherine appeared in the doorway, curiosity writ large across her face, her feet perfectly clean on the tile, despite her wanderings. She paused, surveying the scene, and for a split second looked as if she might turn back. Then she stepped over the threshold, hands behind her back.

Chloe, so caught up in her war with the stand mixer, didn’t see her at first. Dawn did, and immediately reached for a spare apron on the hook by the fridge. She held it up, smiling, and said, “Come on in, we’re short a taste-tester.” Then she remembered—just as the words were out of her mouth—that Katherine couldn’t wear clothes. There was a beat.

Katherine looked at the apron, then at Dawn, and grinned. She took it, gave it a once-over, and instead of putting it on, she placed it with reverence on a small table, patting it fondly. She then made an exaggerated chef’s bow, hands together, and sidled up to the counter.

Dawn slid a bowl of dough in Katherine’s direction. “You want to help with the buttercreaming?”

Katherine nodded, then picked up the hand mixer and got straight to work. Within seconds it was clear she had done this before: her hands were steady, her wrist angled just so to keep the batter from splattering. She didn’t even need to look down, just kept her eyes on the way the mixer’s beaters blurred the yellow and white together, until it was perfectly smooth.

Dawn watched, a little awed. “You’re a natural,” she said.

Katherine smiled, then let go of the mixer, set it down with the grace of a person who’d spent years doing exactly that, and wiped her hands on the apron. She dusted her palms, then started lining a sheet pan with parchment paper, keeping the cookies equidistant by some internal compass. There was an economy to her motion that neither Dawn nor Chloe could replicate.

Chloe, impressed, said, “Where’d you learn to do that?”

Katherine paused, thought for a second, then held up one finger, then touched her head. She made a small circle with her other hand, at the height of a child, then rocked her arms gently, like a mother holding a baby.

Dawn went still for a heartbeat, then blinked. “You used to bake with your kid?”

Katherine nodded, face careful. Then, with a quick, self-mocking gesture, she mimed blowing flour from her nose and wrinkled her face in exaggerated disgust, as if to say: it was messy, but worth it.

Chloe didn’t speak at first, just kept scooping dough onto the pan. But the movement slowed. When she finally looked up, her eyes were red. “How old is your kid now?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Katherine looked down at her hands. She counted on her fingers—slow, deliberate, not years in the painting, but years since birth—and held up both hands, then one more hand, then, after a moment, three more fingers. Seventeen, eighteen. Her face said the number wasn’t exact, but it was close enough.

The kitchen, for a moment, was silent except for the hum of the mixer. Dawn felt the sadness like a punch, but didn’t want to make it worse. She went to the fridge and retrieved a tub of cream cheese, started cutting it into cubes. She wasn’t sure what to say, so she just worked, letting the movement of her hands fill the space.

Chloe broke the quiet first. “If it helps,” she said, “you’re still a good mom. Even if you couldn’t be there.”

Katherine blinked, then smiled, small and raw. Then, carefully, she made a little heart with her fingers, and pressed it toward Chloe.

Dawn couldn’t help herself. She wiped her hands on a towel and hugged her, squeezing tight. Katherine tensed for a second, then melted into the hug, arms around Dawn’s shoulders, face pressed into her neck.

Chloe watched, then quietly slid the cookie sheets into the oven. She checked the timer, then turned back. “We’re naming these after your kid,” she said. “Whatever their name is, that’s the name for the first batch.”

Katherine shrugged, a helpless, honest gesture: I can’t tell you.

Chloe nodded. “That’s okay. They’ll be Mystery Batch. Or maybe Katherine’s Best. I’ll figure it out.”

Dawn wiped her cheek, then grinned. “Next time, you’re teaching us all your tricks.”

Katherine smiled, wiped her own eyes, then reached for a spoon and started portioning the next tray, shoulders set, determined. The kitchen filled with the scent of baking cookies, and even though the timer still had a good ten minutes left, the three of them stayed close, side by side, waiting to see how they’d turn out.

Whatever the name, they’d be the best on the island.