Visions

The Sky Archive didn’t really have mornings; the sun was visible through the prism-glass walls at all hours, a slow-motion hallucination of dawn and dusk that played out for whoever was reckless enough to climb this high. Claire was already there, notebook open, writing in careful, deliberate script. She’d been at it for hours after Erin's arrival—carrying Andy’s visions, as Erin had recited them, every fragment, in sequence, with no editorializing. She’d double-checked the order, noted two instances where Erin’s recall was not exact, wrote down the word Erin had heard. Now she was cross-referencing the fragments with her own index of the Archive, checking the symbolism and, with more skepticism than hope, looking for a thread that ran through them all.

Norah arrived with less ceremony than usual, her shoes broadcasting her progress on the glass treads of the Archive’s floor. Four inches, minimum; Claire could hear it in the staccato of the steps. Norah always looked like she’d just stepped off the set of a perfume ad, but today her outfit was especially on-the-nose: fitted black pencil skirt, iridescent red silk blouse, the top three buttons undone, cleavage so aggressively presented it bordered on parody. Her hair was pulled back and set with jeweled pins, and she’d paired the look with a lipstick shade only a woman absolutely sure of her own draw would attempt. She made no effort to quiet her arrival.

Claire, whose focus was surgical when she wrote, didn’t bother looking up until the staccato heels were a body-length away. She finished a line, put the pen down, and tapped the page twice, the signal for either important news or an argument in progress. She rotated the notebook so Norah could see the running header: VISION THREADS / ANDY. Norah leaned forward, one hand braced on the table, and peered down at the script.

“Something new?” Norah asked. Her voice was a low purr, slightly sardonic, but not in a way that made fun of Claire. They’d worked together before; Norah knew Claire was at her best when things were urgent, and she respected that enough to skip the small talk.

Claire nodded, then pointed with the pen at the top entry in a new column. It was a timestamp, followed by a brief, blunt synopsis:

SKY ARCHIVE, EARLY MORNING: ERIN TO CLAIRE, MEMORY DUMP OF ANDY SECOND VISION SET.

“Vision set?” Norah asked, lifting an eyebrow.

Claire quickly jotted down, Andy hacked the system.

She pointed back to the timestamp. Below that was a numbered list—eight fragments, each in Claire’s distinct print. Norah read them without asking for context:

(1) Sam in plaza, oversized sword, fighting bearded man.
(2) Hotel in ruins, endless waste, Andy searching, alone (repeated from birthday hack?)
(3) Harem women in Hollow Garden, tension, missing three (Laura, Myra, Riley).
(4) Green-lit room, veiled woman, “debts of overreach,” “web of obligation.”
(5) Four women kneeling, tortured by bearded man; two women are Laura.
(6) Beach at dusk, harem assembled, Mildred, Arabella, “pale figure,” confrontation building.
(7) Sarah’s cottage, Andy, bad news.
(8) Andy at the footbridge, decades (?) later, missing Laura.

Each line had a margin note, some only a single word. Each line also had a reference, likely to another page in the notebook where the full vision was recorded. Norah’s eyes flicked back up. “You’ve been busy.”

Claire shrugged, then wrote with quick precision:

Erin brought all this at 0700, memory nearly verbatim. Andy used cheat codes to hack the system. Like he did during the birthday party. This is what he saw.

Norah said, “So, it’s real. The visions, I mean. They’re not just a fever dream. Erin relayed them? Is Andy okay?”

Claire nodded again, more sharply this time, then scribbled: He is. She also heard Andy say the word “overreach” out loud. It stuck. She said Andy was out cold for ten minutes. No memory of speaking.

Norah’s expression went from sardonic to intent, and she sat down without further preamble, crossing her legs with a flourish that sent the skirt higher. “What’s your take? I assume you’ve already cross-indexed the fragments?”

Claire made a so-so hand motion, then underlined three words on the sheet: “debt,” “web,” and “overreach.” She wrote: There’s no narrative here. It’s a list of moments. Like a failed divination. But it’s not random. Each fragment is a node in the network, not a line.

Norah chewed this for a moment. “So, you’re thinking this isn’t a sequence—it’s a warning? A structure, not a story.”

Claire shrugged. I think some of these are connected, but I can't figure out the sequence yet. Some may be EITHER/OR, depending on choices we all make.

“Who is the bearded man?” Norah asked, referencing the first and fifth fragment. “Andy didn’t say. It’s not Greg, or you’d have written it that way. Who is he?”

Claire wrote: I don’t know. Could be new, or disguised, or a composite. Could be symbolic, for all we know.

Norah went down the fragments again, this time searching for connections. “You think the overreach is associated with the bearded man? Or is it two separate events?”

Claire took a long pause, then wrote: Overreach may refer to a principle, not a person. But the context is always violence, a contest of will, or a wound that doesn’t heal.

Norah drummed her nails once, then stopped. “Is this about the Gate? The First Gate? Or is this something worse?”

Claire shook her head, wrote: The First Gate does not appear in the fragments. She then underlined a note in the margin of fragment six: pale figure.

Norah frowned. “That’s in the vision with Arabella and Mildred. Is the figure Anna, or…?”

Claire hesitated, then wrote: Erin described the woman as “terrifyingly pale,” with “straight black hair.” She’s probably Ereshkigal.

Norah’s face changed. It was not fear—Norah didn’t really do fear—but a cold calculation. “That would track. If Ereshkigal is to claim the debt, it makes sense she’d show up here.”

Claire underlined bearded man.

“A servant, or an agent. Or a weapon,” Norah said, and her voice was different now—lower, as if she didn’t want to disturb the logic by speaking too loudly.

They both sat with this for a moment. Norah didn’t smile, but there was a kind of satisfaction in the way she absorbed this and moved on. “So. Bearded man as agent, hostile, maybe the debt collector. If we’re right, it’s the escalation.”

Claire underlined the phrase “debt collector,” then drew a line down to the next fragment. She held the pen there for a moment, then wrote in the margin, slowly and with unusual deliberateness:

If he is Ereshkigal’s agent, there is one candidate. She turned to a fresh column and wrote the name at the top: NERGAL.

Norah’s eyes followed the line. “I don’t know that name.”

Claire nodded as if she’d expected this, then wrote: Also known as Abi-Eshu. The first Master Arabella hosted on Earth. Ereshkigal and Inanna were both contestants in that season. When Abi-Eshu died, Ereshkigal claimed him. She wrote the next line with a single underline for emphasis: I cannot find a record of that enslavement ending.

Norah was quiet for a beat. When she spoke, her voice had lost its sardonic edge entirely. “She’s had him for that long. And now she’s pointing him at Andy.”

Claire tapped the page once.

“That’s not a debt collector,” Norah said. “That’s a weapon she’s been sharpening for centuries.”

Claire drew a slow circle around the word “overreach,” then looked up. Her handwriting didn’t waver. She wrote: There’s more. The scene with Sam and the sword. The sword is oversized, ceremonial, impossible to wield except as a display. That’s not accidental.

Norah pursed her lips. “You think it’s foreshadowing? Like, this is how you win: with a weapon you shouldn’t be able to use?”

Claire shrugged. Ordinarily, yes. But Andy, Sam and Laura are strong enough that Sam could conceivably lift that sword. So I don’t know if the scene is literal.

Norah leaned in, dropping the usual distance between them to almost nothing. “Have you ever seen a weapon like that in the Archive? Or in the Hotel?”

Claire thought, flipping through internal files, then wrote: Yes. Museum of Pleasures Past, during the heist. Stuck in the floor, in front of the entrance to the Hall of Fertility.

Norah exhaled, slow and deliberate, as if she’d just been handed the answer key to a final she was sure she’d failed. “Right. I remember. Sam was upset she didn’t have the chance to wield it.”

Claire’s lips quirked. She wrote: The sword was called “Thrustworthy.” If I remember correctly, it was from an Arabella series, Avalon.

Norah’s mouth broke into an involuntary grin. “Sam is going to want to hear this herself.”

Claire shrugged. Then, she wrote: Agreed. But keep it between us for now? Until we’re sure? If we tip it to the wrong person, we may create panic.

Norah nodded. The two of them ran the board one last time, this time as a sweep, picking up threads they’d dropped the first go-round. Norah flagged the vision with all the women assembled on the beach: “This is the convergence point. It’s not a duel, it’s a negotiation.” Claire annotated in the margin: If you can name the players, you can predict the moves. Arabella, Mildred, Ereshkigal, possibly Anna, plus the collector. But where is Andy? Is he the POV?

Norah leaned back, crossing her arms, her confidence returned in full. “I like where this is going. For once, we have a signal.”

Claire agreed.

The sun outside the Archive finally crested the top of the glass, filling the room with a spill of rainbow-white. For a second, Norah’s face was haloed, and she looked less like a cat-fighting office goddess and more like a strategist whose wars were fought in decimal points and precedent.

“Okay,” Norah said. “We tell Sam. No one else yet. We need her to want it. If she does, I think we can line up the rest.”

Claire nodded, then wrote: I’ll document the rest. But I don’t know how she could even get the sword.

Norah uncrossed her arms, gave a two-finger salute, and made for the stairs, the click of her heels echoing as she descended.

Claire sat alone for a moment, breathing in the new light, her pen poised over the page. She felt the pulse of certainty, not from the Archive, but from herself, and it was enough to make her keep writing even after Norah was gone.

---

Sam hit the water hard and came up in a clean slice, shaking the salt from her hair before paddling back to shore. She’d always liked the mornings best—beach empty except for the long-distance runners and the birds, sun just warm enough to matter. The Hotel’s beach was better than any she’d seen in her real life, but this stretch was always her favorite: not the main sweep where the dates happened, not the cove where the real swimmers trained, but the section that looked like it belonged to another country. The sand was fine and white, and every thirty yards there was a piece of driftwood big enough to sit on.

She waded up, water streaming off her, and stretched on one of the logs, eyes closed, letting the new day build itself around her. It was the first moment in weeks she’d had to herself. It lasted maybe forty seconds before Norah’s voice, clipped and unmistakable, cut across the sand.

“Don’t drown. It’s unsanitary.”

Sam opened one eye. “It’s sterile. Salt kills everything.”

Norah didn’t even slow down. She picked her way over the sand with mechanical precision, not a slip, not a second where the heels threatened her balance. She looked like she was about to depose a corporate enemy, not hit the beach.

Sam flicked water at her. “If you want me to die of exposure, you gotta be more creative.”

Norah ignored it. “We need to talk. Alone.”

Sam nodded, sat up straighter, and wrapped the towel around her chest. “What’s wrong?”

Norah dropped into the sand, legs folded to one side, and said, “I went to the Archive first. New information. Claire thinks it’s big.”

Sam’s heartbeat kicked up a little. “It’s the visions, right? Erin said Andy was seeing things again.”

Norah nodded. “Claire has a list. We’re in it, most of us. But there’s something new: a bearded man, in two visions, both times hostile. Neither of us recognize him.”

Sam thought for a second. “Anyone we know?”

“Not anyone you or I have seen. Claire’s betting it’s new. Or old. Might be the first Master of Arabella’s seasons on Earth. Abi-Eshu. She called him Nergal, too.”

Sam chewed the inside of her cheek. “So, best case, a debt collector. Worst case, someone with a grudge the size of Mount Everest. And this is…?”

“Contingency scenario. The one we planned. If the legal workaround fails, if Arabella can’t stall it any longer—”

“Someone has to fight the fight,” Sam finished. “That’s what you’re saying.”

Norah nodded. “If it’s a person, it can bleed. If it bleeds, someone has to try. Can’t think of someone better for the job.”

Sam looked out at the ocean. She didn’t love it, but she’d known for a while it was coming. “You got a timeline?”

Norah shook her head. “No. But the visions are always prelude, never postlude. It’s a warning. You and I, we have to assume the debt comes due by the wedding.”

Sam grinned. “We always are the only ones who liked to plan for worst-case.”

Norah’s face softened, just for a second. “Better to see it coming than pretend.”

They both let that sit. Sam felt the heaviness of it, but not the fear. If anything, it made her want to get up and start training, punching the wind or swimming laps until her lungs hurt. “What else?”

Norah’s eyes went flinty. “One more thing. Not sure if it’s good news or a cruel joke. Andy saw you. In one of the visions. Not just present—fighting. With a sword the size of a surfboard.”

Sam blinked. “Like… an anime sword?”

“Bigger. Ornate. Named ‘Thrustworthy.’”

Sam barked a laugh. “Wait, that’s the dildo sword from the Museum heist, right? The one we saw towards the end?”

Norah’s mouth twitched. “Yes. The one you wanted to use against the Mildreds, but didn’t have time to pull.”

“I remember,” Sam said. “I was pissed at the time. I’ve thought about that thing a dozen times since.”

Norah’s smile was thin but real. “In the vision, you could use it.”

For a second, Sam just sat there, letting the idea reconfigure her morning. Then she said, “You know, I could really use a win. If I have to fight a cosmic debt collector, I want to do it with the most ridiculous dildo sword in history.”

Norah actually laughed, a real, quick laugh, and Sam grinned back. “Can you imagine the look on his face? Guy shows up for a knife fight and I’m swinging a half-ton meme sword.”

“That’s the spirit,” Norah said. “Just… don’t get cocky.”

Sam saluted. “Scouts honor.”

They both went quiet for a minute. Sam could feel the old tension in Norah, the way she always wanted to win arguments and hated it when the world didn’t play fair. But under that was something else—maybe the closest thing to friendship Sam had ever gotten from her.

Sam said, “We tell no one?”

“For now,” Norah said. “Just you and me, and Claire.”

“Good. I’d rather not put it in the group chat.”

Norah stood, brushed the sand off her skirt, and offered a hand. Sam took it, let Norah help her up. The sun was higher now, painting their shadows long behind them.

Sam squeezed Norah’s hand before letting go. “Thanks. For letting me know.”

Norah almost smiled. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“Never,” Sam said, and meant it.

They walked together back to the main path, not saying much. It was the closest thing to peace Sam had felt all week.

She didn’t know what would happen, but for the first time, she wanted to see the look on the bastard’s face when she swung that sword.

---

They walked the Hollow Garden’s southern path in a group of three. Myra led, her steps almost soundless on the springy moss, fox tails swaying to either side of her legs for balance. Behind her, Laura walked with an uncanny precision, two bodies in identical stride, arms folded behind her back, eyes scanning the undergrowth for something she wouldn’t name out loud. At the end, Riley trailed with her hands in the pockets of her denim jacket, breathing fast and shallowly. She’d never been more aware of the fact that she was walking with two genetic half-sisters.

“Do you need to breathe, or is that for our benefit?” Myra asked at one point, turning her blind face toward Riley with a sly smile.

“Breathing’s my second-favorite addiction,” Riley said. “First is existential dread.”

Laura’s two heads cocked in opposite directions, almost like she was arguing with herself and winning. “If it helps, you’re not the only one.”

Riley let it go, but she felt the small jolt of sisterhood anyway. It was more than she’d gotten from her real family in a long time.

They made their way along the soft trail between the citrus and bay laurels, the mossy ground beneath so thick it seemed to swallow their footsteps before the air could even try. Myra walked a half-pace ahead, the landscape around her bathed in soft emotions: waiting, peace, contentment, tinged with regret and sorrow, gratefulness, love. Behind, Laura’s two bodies followed with a serenity that was almost martial: arms behind her backs, each step in sync, the hair on both heads catching the dappled light in identical ways. The effect was unnerving to Riley, who trailed with her hands in her jacket and her thoughts looped tight.

“You could slow down, you know,” said Riley, as they came up on a gnarled olive tree that leaned over the path. “It’s not a race.”

“I’m letting you set the pace,” said Myra, not missing a step. “You’re the one with somewhere to be.”

Laura, both heads, made a soft noise of agreement. “You really are, you know,” she said. “I haven’t even seen you this driven since that time with the science fair volcano.”

Riley side-eyed them. “That’s how you’re going to play it? You’re ganging up?”

Myra flashed a grin over her shoulder. “I’m just glad you finally admit you like having sisters.”

Riley wanted to snap back but found herself half-smiling instead. “I did not admit it. You have exactly three seconds to walk that back, or I tell everyone in the harem you cried at the end of Coco.”

“Everyone cries at the end of Coco,” Myra shot back, her tails flicking with self-satisfaction.

They reached the cottage—a patchwork of weathered boards and stucco, surrounded by wildflowers and the stubborn scent of rosemary. The window was open, a sheer curtain fluttering in the breeze. On the porch, a nurse Mildred sat whittling at something in her lap, but she stood and melted into the greenery as they approached.

Riley paused on the steps, her stomach in freefall. “I’m not sure she wants to see me again,” she said, soft enough that the breeze could have taken it.

“You won’t know until you try,” Myra said. She gestured with her cane for Riley to go first. “We’ll wait out here if you want. Or not. Up to you.”

Riley shook her head. “No. I want you both.”

The door was unlocked. She knocked anyway. There was a pause—a long one—then Sandra’s voice, flat as a chalk line: “Come in.”

Inside, the cottage was cold and dim, the only light coming from the window and a small lamp in the corner. There was a low table surrounded by pillows, low shelves with large books, and an oversized pillow in one corner. There was also a folding screen, painted with a parade of cats in Victorian dress, which partitioned off the bed and a slice of the floor near it.

Sandra was not visible.

Myra stepped in first, then stopped. She found a pillow and settled in, tails coiling around the legs, and waited. Laura’s two bodies took the other pillows. Riley remained near the partition, but did not cross behind.

She didn’t try to see around it. Not today.

Sandra’s voice, behind the partition, hinted at amusement, tinged with something unreadable. “You brought the pack.”

Riley felt something bubble up—old anger, ready to boil—but she kept her hands in her pockets and said, “Yeah. Is that okay?”

A pause. “It’s everyone’s Garden.”

Riley took a breath. “Not really.”

The silence went on long enough that Myra started to feel it—a color in the air, the sharp-pink tension of someone braced for an attack. But Sandra did not move or speak further, so Riley did. She leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and started talking.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said. “Last time I came in here, I just… blew it up. I don’t know if that’s what you want, or what you’re hoping I’ll do again.” She exhaled, the words going out and not coming back. “But I want to try something different. I want to know who you are. Even if it means we just talk at a screen for the next hundred years.”

There was a little movement behind the partition, the sound of claws tapping the floor. “You want me to tell you what? How you were made? Why you’re here?”

“I want anything you’re willing to give. Not just because I want it,” Riley said, “but because I want you to want it too.”

A silence, but it was different now. Myra tracked the change: a wash of something softer, a smoky gold she had never seen from this direction.

“Your father didn’t want a kid,” Sandra said. No warming up. “He wanted a harem, but not another mouth. He liked it when the harem was neat and controlled. He hated that Sarah had become pregnant during the show. When I came up pregnant, he blamed it on Arabella, said she sabotaged him. He tried to get rid of it, but was afraid to push too hard.” Sandra’s voice was not bitter, but flat in a way that made the facts of it land without edge or cushioning.

Riley listened. She did not pace, did not approach the screen or press her hand to the wood; she kept her distance, as if the room might shrink if she moved too quickly. “Why did you keep me?”

A long exhale from the other side. “I wish I could say I convinced him, but I didn’t. Arabella did. She threatened to punish him if he hurt Laura when she was born. Greg was paranoid she’d count it against him if he made any of us who got pregnant, end it.” A rustle—Sandra shifting position, maybe sitting back on her haunches. “I never planned to be a mother. That was the last thing I ever wanted. I was a dog, in Greg’s head. He called me his hellhound.” She snorted in derision, but it sounded like a sob.

Riley waited, but the words stopped there for a while. She filled in the gap with her own breath, steadying it.

Myra, across the room, saw a storm of unreadable colors, a blur of confusion and fierce, burnt orange pain. She kept her face turned from the others, letting Riley and Sandra take the moment.

Sandra said, “Do you want to hear the rest?”

“I want to hear anything you’re willing to say,” Riley said. “I want to know you, even if it’s just this.”

There was another silence, longer this time. Then: “I wasn’t like the other women. They were all changed, but I was… a joke. My arms and legs, the ears, the tail. I couldn’t walk upright after my… elimination. He made sure of it.” A huff, almost a laugh. “I didn’t care. It was better than being touched by him. I thought I’d get eliminated, then die. But then I figured out I was pregnant.”

A shift of sound, claws tapping the floor. “By then, I couldn’t even clean myself. The other girls tried to help, but there was only so much they could do. I hated it. I hated myself for what he had made me become.”

Laura’s two bodies had not moved at all, but both watched the partition, eyes unblinking, as if the only thing that mattered in the world was the woman behind it.

Sandra’s voice dropped lower, almost uninflected: “He wasn’t there when you were born. Just the other women. I couldn’t hold you—my hands weren’t—” She stopped. Started again. “Marie held you. She was pregnant herself at the time. She was the one who cleaned you off.”

Riley waited.

“Greg came the next morning. Said a dog had no business raising a human child. He told them to take you to a hospital.” A faint sound, like something shifting weight. “The women pushed back. Marie especially. But when he gave an order, that was the end of it. Marie was the one who drove you. They barely had time to sew your name into the rabbit I sent with you.”

Riley’s jaw worked once, silently. “That’s not all, though.”

A beat of nothing, then Sandra’s voice: “No. It isn’t.”

There was a shuffling sound from behind the partition, like someone shifting on hands and knees, but it faded before it could become a confession or a collapse.

Riley waited, and did not ask again. She didn’t have to. If there was one thing she’d learned from her years of showing up for impossible kids and impossible parents, it was that you had to let the silence hurt before anything could grow inside it.

So she stood, hands in her pockets, gaze fixed on the cartoon cats stenciled across the folding screen. She wondered if Sandra had picked the design, or if it had been placed here by some staffer with a sick sense of humor.

She waited, and after a while, Sandra began.

In the hush behind the partition, the words came out dry and flat and clear: “Most women, you ask them, they’ll say what they’re supposed to say about wanting a child, even if it’s a lie. That wasn’t me.” Sandra let the words hang, then continued, her voice breaking at the word “defective” before she rebuilt the wall. “When I figured out I was pregnant, he told me I was defective. You were an accident. He didn’t want you. He didn’t want any of his daughters. And when he found out I was pregnant and said he’d order me to give you up… I felt relieved.”

They were stone-dropped facts, not accusations—each one thrown into the quiet to see if it would sink or if the surface would break and something would rise up. Sandra sounded as though she had repeated this story to herself a hundred times, and each time she had cut another layer of the self-pity away, so that now only the bone remained. It was not meant to wound, only to show Riley what the bone looked like. She wanted Riley to know, in the most direct way possible, that what had happened was not a story with a villain and a victim but a chain of events, unvarnished and exact.

Riley felt it, those stones falling, and she realized only as she spoke that she had hoped for something more complicated, something with a secret will to it, or an act of rebellion, or even a wound to show. “So you didn’t want me either,” she said, but it came out so small that the words almost tripped over each other. She had meant to sound angry, but what came out was need: a thin, tight thread she couldn’t pull back in. She could not have predicted how much it would matter, hearing it said aloud.

“I never said that.” Sandra’s reply was immediate—a snap, a slap, but not with anger. Just the uncompromising logic of someone who could not bear a wrong inference to sit in the air for even a second. “I didn’t want to be a mother, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want you.” Then, softer, a bitter laugh that showed its teeth and then withdrew. “You want to know the truth?”

Riley, so caught up in the sound of the voice she’d only ever known from a distance, forgot that the woman could not see her nod. “Yeah,” she said, and the word barely carried.

The silence that followed was thick enough to feel as a presence, broken only by the distant warble from outside and the slow, restless motion of Laura’s two bodies on the pillows. Myra, tracking the color shift in the air, saw it mute and turn inward, saw the violence of pain contract down to a coal that would not go out.

“I liked being pregnant,” Sandra said. “Didn’t think I would. They fed me whatever I wanted. I got to sleep in the best spot. It was the only time I could really rest, because he was disgusted by the idea of touching me after.” The bitterness in her tone was not aimed at Riley, or even at her own body—it was aimed at the world that had constructed this as the only path out of pain. “And you were the only thing that was ever just mine.”

The image, when it landed, was sharp: a woman, broken so completely that even the ordinary animal needs of her life were out of her reach, finding a single point of ownership in the life she carried, even as she knew it was borrowed, and that it would be taken from her. Riley tried to put herself in that cage, to imagine what it would mean to be denied everything and then finally be given something, even if it was only a body to host a stranger in for a little while.

“I’m sorry,” Riley said, and she meant it, though she was not sure if she was apologizing for herself or for the way the world kept making and breaking women in the same old patterns.

“You shouldn’t be sorry.” Sandra’s voice was gentle, almost unfamiliar. There was another pause, but it was not empty: it was the sound of something being handled with care, considered before it was given away. “I want to tell you something. I didn’t want to be a mother. I told you that. But around the third month, I started doing arithmetic I hadn’t meant to do.” The sound of claws resettling, the sense of a body shifting its weight so as not to fall over. “I figured out that the time between then and when you were born was all the time I was ever going to have. That you’d come out, and they’d take you somewhere I couldn’t follow, and that would be the whole of it.”

Riley’s hands, deep in her jacket, had gone perfectly still. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. She could feel the math of it: how nine months could become both a prison and an entire lifetime.

“So I talked to you. Every night, mostly. I told you the names of all the women—what they were like, the things they did that were worth knowing. I told you what the garden smelled like after it rained. I sang to you, badly.” A vibration in the voice, like it was going to shatter into either laughter or sobbing and could not decide which. “I told you I wanted you to be somewhere warm. I told you I wanted someone to teach you things. I told you I was sorry it couldn’t be me.” Sandra’s voice dropped lower. “By the end, I dreaded it. Every day you got closer to being born was a day closer to losing you. I’d never dreaded anything more in my life, and I’d had a lot to dread.” There was no drama in it—just the absolute, worn-down truth of someone who had held the thing in their chest until it went smooth and cold and hard. “I loved you. I want you to know that. I loved you before I ever saw your face.”

Riley choked on a breath she’d meant to release steady and found that her throat had gone unreliable. “I didn’t know that,” she said, and her voice came out in fragments, each word the start of a sentence that never finished. There was a second where she thought she might break, that the whole shell of her would come apart and she would have to leave the room to keep from doing something irretrievable, but she stayed.

“You loved me,” she said, and it was not a question but a plea, a need for the word to be pressed into her skin by the woman who had made her and then lost her.

“Yes,” said Sandra, and there was such force in the word that it hit the back wall of the cottage and seemed to ricochet.

Riley stood there, letting the word repeat itself in her chest, over and over, until it stopped hurting and started to burn. She pressed her hand to the fabric of her shirt, as if she could hold the word in place until it stuck.

She did not speak for a long time, and the moment had the feeling of being suspended, as though no one in the world could move until Sandra said what came next.

“I know.” She pressed her hand briefly to her sternum, as if checking that something was still there. “I don’t hate you. I need you to hear that. And I don’t need you to say anything you’re not ready to say.” She paused. “I just want you to want to know me. Even a little.”

The claws on the other side flexed against the floor, the only sign of emotion that leaked through. “I do,” Sandra said, “or you wouldn’t be here.”

There was a long moment where neither of them spoke, and it didn’t hurt at all.

Then Sandra said, “When I found out you were here—” She stopped. Started again. “I didn’t sleep. I just kept—” Another stop, longer this time. The shuffling sound came again from behind the partition, closer now, and then it went still. “I want to hold you.” The words came out wrecked, like they’d been held too long. “I’ve wanted to hold you since before you were born, and I can’t. I can’t let you see me, and I can’t—” Her voice broke on the last word and didn’t quite recover. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not fair to put on you.”

Riley’s throat was very tight. “I’d let you,” she said. “If you wanted to. I’d let you.”

“Riley.” Just her name, but it was full of something Sandra had been carrying for thirty years. “I want to hold my daughter. I want that more than—” The sentence didn’t finish. The partition trembled once, faintly, and went still. “ I’m afraid if you see me, that’s the thing you’ll remember. Not any of this.”

Riley looked at the cartoon cats on the screen and breathed through her nose. “I think,” she said carefully, “that you don’t get to decide what I remember.”

A silence. Then a sound that might have been a laugh, surprised out of Sandra against her will. “No,” she admitted. “I suppose I don’t.”

“So we go slow,” Riley said. “You give me a time. You give me your best. That’s enough for now.”

The partition was quiet for a long moment. “You’d come back.”

“I already said I’m not going anywhere.” Riley pressed two fingers briefly to the screen. “Tell me when.”

“Good,” said Sandra. Then, a tremor in her voice, she added. “Same time, tomorrow?”

Riley nodded. “Okay. Okay.”

There was a shuffling sound, and then, under the edge of the partition, a small thing slid out—maybe a stone, maybe a pin or a bead, something that had been thumbed a thousand times in a pocket. Riley knelt and picked it up. It was a glass bead, blue and green, the color of a marble she’d had as a child. She closed her hand around it and did not say thank you. Sandra did not say you’re welcome.

Riley stood and backed away, the motion careful, not because she was afraid but because she didn’t want to lose the shape of what had just happened. She looked at Myra, who was still coiled on the pillow, and at Laura, who had watched the entire exchange with the patience of someone who’d learned when not to interrupt.

Myra said, “You did good.” It was the kind of praise that didn’t care if it landed or not—it was for the record.

Laura, both bodies at once, said, “I’m proud of you.”

Riley exhaled, and it felt like the first clean breath she’d taken in years.

“Thanks,” she said, and she let herself lean into Myra’s shoulder. Laura moved to the other side, one hand on Riley’s back.

They walked out of the cottage together, all three, and it wasn’t like being a family, not yet, but it was close enough that Riley didn’t want to call it anything else.

She rolled the marble in her fingers as they walked, and for once, she let herself hope it would be the start of something she could keep.