Education of the Heart

by TheFandomLesbian

"Everything about Mary Eunice is pure, and gentle, and kind. Lana knows if anything will destroy the malevolence inside him, Mary Eunice will." In which Sister Mary Eunice adopts Lana's son as her own. Bananun. T for language and suggestive content. One-shot.

From the moment his cry pierces the air in the hospital room, Mary Eunice is there at her bedside. "It's a boy!" Lana wants to glare at the doctor, but she can't manage the strength. The nurse carts the baby away. People harry over her—she doesn't pay much attention to them. The morphine has numbed her all over, and she floats in a pleasant, exhausted haze for an indefinite amount of time, Mary Eunice's hand in her own, gentle fingers wiping her sweaty brow and tucking her stringy hair behind her ears.

She awakens when the nurse brings the baby back to them. He's howling. Mary Eunice rises from her chair. "She's resting," she says, gentle but stern. "She doesn't want to see him. I'll take him when they're ready to be discharged." The nurse attempts to side-step around her. "She's sleeping," Mary Eunice says again.

"Not anymore," Lana mumbles, still groggy. She rubs her eyes with one fist like a toddler stirred from a nap. The numbness has worn off, and her body aches. As she pushes herself up, her ass squishes in the pad they've strapped on her, all of the blood running down and out of her burning genitals. A string of wires attaches to her hands and tugs them back. "I told you I don't want to see him." Now, she has the strength to glare, and she fixes the nurse under a dark look, but the woman doesn't bow under the pressure.

"Please." The nurse rocks the inconsolable newborn, a blue cap shielding his bald head. In the wrap of blankets, Lana can't see his face. But the whole goddamn hospital can hear him. "He's allergic to the formula. We have a specialty shipment coming in tonight, but it's going to be a few hours—he's hungry."

Mary Eunice intercedes. "No," she says. "There are half a dozen other women in this ward. Can't you ask one of them?"

"I can't ask a patient to nurse another patient's baby."

"Fine," Lana says. Anything to shut him up. The horrible wails of the baby are enough to send her blood pressure up; a thin sheen of sweat has erupted on her since he entered the room. "Give him to me." Mary Eunice gapes. A certain sadness lays in her azure eyes, a certain pity, a certain love—all of the things she had shown on that night, those months ago, when she had agreed to this arrangement, when she had kissed Lana for the first time. What they are now, Lana isn't sure, but she knows this will change all of it.

The nurse hands her the baby. She opens the front of her gown with clumsy fingers, and at the sound of an intercom, the nurse flees the room. She doesn't look down at him. Instead, she presses his cheek to her breast. His cry interrupts into a gasp, almost of surprise. He's astonished I would provide for him. A hand paws around her nipple before he latches. He nurses greedily, scarred from the first hours of his life starving him. Lana thanks whatever mercy rests in the heavens, however limited, for a good supply; she remembers, vaguely, her doctor telling her something about insufficient supply being common. (More, she remembers snapping at him that he was half-brained if he thought she had any intention of breastfeeding this baby. She hopes he doesn't find out about this.)

Some part of her is afraid to look at his face, so she gazes at Mary Eunice, who has averted her eyes in deference. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asks.

"I'm sure."

There's an emergency down the hall. Everyone is racing around and shouting. When the baby detaches himself from her breast, she pushes him away, and Mary Eunice takes him without hesitation, propping him up on her shoulder and patting his back until he gives an audible belch. From the corner of her eye, Lana spies a dimple. He's smiling. Mary Eunice grins back at him, goofy as a thrilled dog. She knows he's smiling on reflex, rather than socially, but the interaction eases a stressed tangle in the pit of her stomach. If she knew any modicum of joy anymore, she supposes she would feel it now. She doesn't quite manage a smile of her own. But she thinks she'll get there. I hope. "What are you going to name him?" she asks.

Mary Eunice blinks in surprise. As the baby begins to sleep, she stands to close the door and muffle the sounds of panic down the hall. She cradles him against her chest, easy and soft. "I thought you would name him."

"You're his mother. You're naming him."

Mary Eunice frowns. "Right. I hadn't considered…" She stares down at him, as if she can read his personality in his squishy, red face. "Oh, I don't know! Every cat I've ever owned was named Patches." Lana chuckles at this, quiet and dry, because it matches Mary Eunice so well. "What do you think?" Lana holds up a hand, shaking her head, but Mary Eunice isn't accepting the answer of refusal; desperation lies in her eyes. "Lana, please. I wasn't expecting this. You've got to help me."

She knows Mary Eunice has decided to do this out of love for her, and out of gratitude, she says, "I like the name Johnny," with a sigh. It goes on the birth certificate, eventually; the document names him Johnny McKee, no middle name, and it's the only document Mary Eunice receives which has Lana's name on it instead of her own.

"Lana, I have to ask you something—and if you say no, that's okay, I'll understand." Lana glances up at her. "I know this is hard for you, but… I'd like you to be his godmother, if you're willing."

She blinks, long and slow, to Mary Eunice. "Yeah," she says. "I will." She doesn't know why she agrees. Perhaps it's because she appreciates her friend. Perhaps it's because some part of her wants to be close to her son, to keep an eye on him, to monitor the situation and keep track of the lies Mary Eunice tells him. He will never know where he came from. That's the way they want it, and they can protect his identity best by keeping him close. She knows it's better this way, where she can watch and still be detached. "Come here," Lana says. "I'm cold."

Mary Eunice sits beside her and tugs the blankets up over her, tucking them around her lap. She guards the baby, keeping the soft blanket wrapped around him, obscuring his face. With her pressed so near, Lana has the courage to glance down at him. "He's ugly."

"Lana!" Mary Eunice bursts out into a fit of giggles at her blunt words. She covers her hand with her mouth to muffle them, trying to keep from disturbing the peaceful infant.

Sheepish, she shrugs, averting her eyes. "I mean to say he's not cute. I was expecting him to be cuter. I didn't mean to insult your baby." It's easier if she thinks of him as Mary Eunice's baby rather than her own. If she thinks of him as Mary Eunice's, and of Mary Eunice, maybe she will manage to forget the evil which created him. Everything about Mary Eunice is pure, and gentle, and kind. She knows if anything will destroy the malevolence inside him, Mary Eunice will. "He's just… ugly."

"Babies come out ugly. You'd be pretty pruny, too, if you sat in a tub of warm water for nine months."

"Touche." Lana reclines on the pillows. At first, she stares up at the ceiling. Then, she looks down at the mattress, opening her hand in the hopes Mary Eunice will take it. She does, keeping Johnny resting in the crook of her other arm. The back of her hand bears a deep red bruise, darkening to purple with each passing moment. "Did I do that?" she asks. Mary Eunice responds by taking the hand away and wrapping an arm around her shoulders instead, holding her close. Lana rests her cheek on her shoulder, too tired to resist. "I'm sorry," she says.

Mary Eunice kisses her temple. "Don't be."

Some part of Lana feels guilty for the way she lies in the other woman's embrace, but she has endured too much to begin denying herself things. She loves Mary Eunice. It's a different love than what she felt for Wendy, not as romantic; this love is borne of friendship and gratitude, respect for the support Mary Eunice has given her, for the meals she received, for the hugs through her nightmares. She knows Mary Eunice acts as a form of recompense, that Mary Eunice will never forgive herself for the atrocities the sanitarium committed—she left the church in protest, after all. But Mary Eunice acts out of love, as well, and the feeling is mutual. Lana nuzzles her cheek like the baby rooting in search of a teat. Mary Eunice provides a soft kiss for her, the second one they've shared. Lana exhales, long and deep. The house will be empty when she returns. Mary Eunice has prepared her apartment for the baby. I'm afraid to be alone. "Can I come home with you?"

Burrowing into her greasy hair, Mary Eunice whispers, "If that's what you want. I set up the crib in my bedroom."

"Oh." Lana has no interest in sleeping in the same house with a crying newborn, let alone in the same room. "Never mind."

"I'll come check on you," Mary Eunice says. "Dinner once a week?"

"Mhm." Lana falls asleep there in the crook of her arm, nestled like a much larger counterpart to Mary Eunice's son—the baby she has adopted as her own.

…

Mary Eunice makes good on her promise—better, in fact. She works as a nurse, and every day, after she picks up Johnny from Kit's house where Grace and Alma serve as babysitters, she comes by Lana's house. Most nights, she cooks dinner. Sometimes, she allows Lana to order a pizza, and they spread out on the couch and watch television, Mary Eunice entertaining her growing son. They keep sharing their kisses. Mary Eunice is the only person who can touch Lana without making her shake, and Lana drinks in her physical presence like a drug, the way a plant drinks in the sunlight and the nutrients from the depths of the soil. Each night, when Mary Eunice leaves, Lana misses her, and she eagerly awaits the next night for her to return.

She's there when Johnny speaks his first word. "Ma!" he says, holding up his tiny arms and gazing at Mary Eunice with unfathomable adoration—the same adoration Lana feels for Mary Eunice. Does she know she is so loved? she wonders. As Mary Eunice laughs and weeps tears of joy, she cradles her son. He babbles, thrilled at the happiness his speech has brought to her. "Ma! Ma!"

Lana never doubts how much Mary Eunice loves Johnny. She doesn't regret her decision. She can't bring herself to love him, except for the slight fondness she develops, as if she loved Mary Eunice enough to occasionally walk her dog. Give it time. He is her godson. What she cannot provide in affection, she grants in financial stability—after all, her book sells out, and she wants for nothing. She buys him clothing, toys, and books, more books than she can conceive of; she forgets all of the titles she purchases, first baby books, then children's books, and eventually she caves to buy any book she reads that she likes, giving it to Mary Eunice to fill a shelf for when he's older. When Mary Eunice comes to her, meek and apologetic, for help with the bills which a single mother with no high school education simply cannot afford, Lana kisses her hard and makes her promise never to feel shame for needing help.

Johnny is almost two when Lana touches him for the first time, quite by accident. Lana and Mary Eunice are in the kitchen, working on spaghetti, while he plays with his stuffed animals in the living room, talking to himself, fully immersed in his pretend play. "Where did the pink unicorn come from?" Lana asks. Mary Eunice ogles at her like she has sprouted a second head until she clarifies, "The toy. That he's playing with. Don't look at me like I'm nuts."

Mary Eunice shakes herself. "I just spent ten hours in the psychiatric ward. I was about to swear I'd brought the crazy home with me." Lana laughs and lays a hand on her shoulder, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek. Mary Eunice turns to catch Lana's lips in her own, a peck exchanged between the two of them. "He does toy trades with Julia. She doesn't like all the pink stuff Kit gets her. She likes the toy trucks Johnny doesn't play with. He says pink is his favorite color, so they share."

In the living room, he talks aloud to his toys. "Go go go!" He charges around in circles, clutching the pink unicorn, running away from an invisible foe. "I think we're safe, Effie," he says to the unicorn.

"He's got an imagination, doesn't he?" Lana observes.

Mary Eunice brightens. Lana doesn't always like to talk about Johnny—and sometimes she can't do it without remembering, and on those days, Mary Eunice apologetically asks Kit and his family to watch Johnny for the night and spends time with Lana alone—but she always glows with pride whenever Lana invests some interest in her child. It warms Lana's heart to watch her sparkle with delight. "He does! When I got there today, they were playing house! Thomas was the daddy, Johnny was the mommy, and Julia was the dog."

"The dog?" Lana echoes. Mary Eunice giggles. "Not—Not the daughter, or the sister, or the second mommy—" After all, she thinks, Thomas and Julia have two mommies. "—but the dog?"

"The dog," Mary Eunice repeats. "Johnny said Thomas wouldn't let them have any babies. Thomas only wanted a dog." The living room quiets, and they both turn their heads in suspicion, only to see Johnny sticking his tiny bare feet into Lana's high heeled shoes from the book signing she'd attended that morning. He balances with his arms outstretched. He has a thick shock of brunette hair and eyes the same dark chocolate hue as Lana's, and his tan skin has fat brown freckles smattered all over his face and arms from exposure to the sun; he looks nothing like his mother, all things blonde and pale and fair and fine. "Johnny, sweetheart, be careful!" Mary Eunice calls.

Lana waves her off. "Let him play."

But the sound of his name summons him, and he hobbles into the kitchen in Lana's shoes, taking too large steps and sliding off of the heels no matter how he tries to keep his balance. As he toddles past her, arms reaching up toward Mary Eunice, he stumbles. "Oof!" Quick as lightning, on a reflex as thoughtless as kicking her knee, Lana swoops down and grabs him by the shoulders to keep him from falling. She catches him and holds him at arm's length, his feet sliding out of the shoes. "Auntie!" he says, eyes big as saucers. She stares into them, the same color as her own, but she feels no connection to him. Cold trickles through her blood. Is that wrong? He carries her blood in his veins. Should she not love him? Should she not feel some semblance of familial intimacy toward the child who had grown in her womb?

Johnny notices none of her internal monologue. He pitches her into a hug as big as his small arms can manage. This kickstarts her voice, which had vanished somewhere deep in her throat. "Are you alright?"

He nods, still clutching her tight. "Thank you."

Mary Eunice clears her throat. She bears a tender look. Lana knows she saw the scars resurface on her face. "Johnny, you need to clean up your mess. Put the shoes back where you found them." He grunts in response. "Now, Johnny." At the stern reminder, he severs from her and picks up the shoes, carrying them back into the living room.

A gentle hand presses on the small of Lana's back. It softens the knot of pain in the pit of her stomach. "I'm sorry," she says. "He likes hugs. I'm trying to teach him to ask first."

"It's fine." Something about Mary Eunice's words comforts her. Perhaps knowing Johnny hugs everyone spontaneously, not just her.

"You could've let him fall. It wouldn't have upset me."

"I know." Lana flashes a smile. It isn't quite genuine, but it's enough for Mary Eunice to embrace her and murmur a word of gratitude. Lana wonders why Mary Eunice thanks her—if she feels so compelled because of the shoes, or if her whole life has moved her to feel indebted to Lana, if she cherishes the slice of family Lana allowed her to create so much that she must thank Lana for the circumstances of their existence. Lana doesn't ask. She merely kisses her and trusts that it is enough.

…

Six months later, Mary Eunice stumbles into Lana's house after a long day at work alone with her eyes red-rimmed and her chest trembling. Lana sweeps her inside and slams the door in her haste. "What's wrong? Where's Johnny?" Mary Eunice breaks off into an inconsolable sob and buries herself into Lana's arms, her whole face giving way into mourning. No, no, no… Lana's blood freezes. Her stomach aches. She drags Mary Eunice to the couch and wraps her in the blanket there, trying to calm her shivers. "Mary Eunice? Talk to me! Tell me what's wrong!" She pinches her hands at the tops of Mary Eunice's arms, resisting the urge to shake her when she reaches for another hug. Lana refuses to cave. "Tell me what happened," she repeats. "Has something happened? Are you hurt?" Mary Eunice shakes her head. "Is there something wrong with Johnny?" She can think of nothing which could shake Mary Eunice to her core like this.

But again, she shakes her head. "No, he—he's at Kit's—" She sniffles hard. "They said he could have a sleepover." This time, when she tries to hug Lana, she wraps her into a tight embrace, kissing the top of her head. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." Mary Eunice shakes in her grasp, weak as a baby bird battering its wings.

"It's fine." Lana wipes the tears from her eyes. "What can I do?"

"Just hold me."

She does until the sun goes down and their bellies rumble and their mouths burn from the dryness. "What happened?" Lana dares to ask again, once Mary Eunice has calmed into a lull, almost asleep. "Did something happen at work?"

She nods thoughtfully. She glances up at Lana, but she doesn't hold her gaze. "There was a woman," she says, "expecting triplets. An older woman." She shudders; no matter how Lana holds her, she can't bring warmth back to the chilled body in her arms. "They lost two heartbeats in the delivery room. They did a caesarean, trying to save the last one—she came out crying, but she was so weak…" Mary Eunice drifts off, teeth chattering. Lana tucks a piece of blonde hair behind her ear, cherishing the soft texture. "They tried to bring her back for ten minutes. Nothing worked. Then they took all three of them away from the mother—they didn't even let her hold them."

Lana hides her face in her hair. "I'm so sorry." Mary Eunice's each breath heaves. "I wish you didn't have to see those things." She knows the deaths at the hospital bother her. But Mary Eunice is unlikely to find a better paying job, and she struggles enough with the bills as it is. "You do so much good. You know that, right? That you help people."

Mary Eunice hums in agreement. "I know." Her voice cracks, and she forces herself to ease. "I didn't want Johnny to see me turn into a basket case, though."

Laughing in spite of herself, Lana strokes her hair. "That privilege is reserved just for me, right?" Mary Eunice gives a broken sigh and nods. "I'll take it." We don't get enough time alone together, anyway. It's the only downfall, knowing Johnny eats away at Mary Eunice's time and separates them where otherwise they could be together. "I love you," Lana says without much thought.

"I love you, too."

"Are we having a sleepover, too?"

"If you'll have me."

"Always."

That night, Lana's bed is filled with woman, and they can't help themselves from dancing beneath the sheets, bare skins pressing together, sweat mingling, tongues tasting places they never dreamed. Mary Eunice makes heavenly sounds, and after she reaches her peak and eases back down from the high, she rests in Lana's arms. "Lana?" she murmurs. Lana grunts. "Was that… Did we just make love?"

Lana realizes Mary Eunice has never had sex before. "Yes," she says. She doesn't tease her for her naivete. "We did."

"Can we do it again?"

Blinking in surprise, Lana asks, "Right now?" with some incredulity.

"No, just—sometime. If you want to."

"Of course."

It becomes a tradition, every other Friday, for Johnny to spend the night at Kit's house with Julia and Thomas so Mary Eunice and Lana have some alone time. (They offer to return the favor, but Kit respectfully declines, and Lana wonders if any of them are happy together.) They make love ferociously, like the world might tear them apart if they don't hold fast to one another. Lana learns to feel the fire in Mary Eunice's kisses, and she leaves marks on her girlfriend's body under the clothes where no one else can see. They memorize the ripples of an orgasm, how each muscle quivers, how the skin twitches. Lana aches on the days between their two days of the month, wanting nothing more than to beg Mary Eunice to come to her and join her on the bed, if only to rest together, if not to make love.

Once, she brings it up. Mary Eunice lies under her arm on the couch, but her shoulders are stiff, and in the silence, she whispers, "I'm sorry." Lana turns off the television and looks at her. Mary Eunice averts her eyes. "I'm behind on rent again." Lana kisses her, hoping to assuage her shame at the request—implied but not explicit. It doesn't ease her sorrow. "I don't mean to keep asking you—one day, I'll pay you back, I swear—"

"No—don't worry about it. Don't." A desperate look tints Mary Eunice's face. "It makes no difference to me. You're worth more than any amount of money. And I have plenty." She dabs at the single tear that has fallen from her girlfriend's eyes. "Don't cry. Please." She clears her throat. "You can move in here if you want."

The blurted words take Mary Eunice aback. "Lana…" She realizes too late bringing it up in this conversation is the wrong place and time. "If—If that's what you want," she hedges, drifting off.

Lana shakes her head. "No. No, forget it. I didn't mean it that way." Relief follows. "But I have a place here for you, should you need it." She knows she doesn't want to live with Johnny. She struggles enough seeing him so often, and Mary Eunice knows it, sees how she strains to maintain even the slightest of courtesy with him. She adores Mary Eunice, but learning to like her son is a never-ending battle. "I just miss you."

"I'm here four days a week."

"At night," Lana says.

Mary Eunice bites the tip of her tongue. "Oh." She rests her head on Lana's shoulder. "You can stay at my apartment whenever you want," she says. "With me. Johnny has his own room now. He never makes a peep at night. We have to be up early, but if you want to stay with us…" Lana agrees. She gets a key to Mary Eunice's apartment later that week. She doesn't stay over often, but sometimes, she awakens from a nightmare in the middle of the night and drives herself down the street, lets herself in the front door, and crawls into bed with her girlfriend. Mary Eunice never questions her. She only scoots over to make more room.

…

Johnny starts school when he's five. He's a year behind Julia and Thomas, who both help him with his homework. At first, Mary Eunice drops him off at school in the morning, and Grace or Alma picks them all up afterward, and she picks him up at Kit's house on her way to Lana's, but it doesn't last. She keeps Johnny home from school the day she hears what happened to Grace and Alma. She calls into work. Her boss tells her it's her last sick day if she wants to keep her job. She agrees. Kit arranges the funeral on a day she doesn't work, and afterward, she clutches at straws to make arrangements for Johnny. Kit gives his kids a key to his house and tells her Johnny can stay with them, like before, but she sees the shadow on his face. She has never paid enough for the daycare they provided, and now, he has lost both mothers to his children. She pleads with her boss to change her hours; he begrudgingly agrees, giving her shorter shifts with fewer days off, so she can get Johnny to and from school twice a week. Twice a week, she lets him go home with Kit's kids.

She never asks Lana to accommodate the fifth day; Lana simply does it without question. Mary Eunice drops him off at her house in the wee hours of the morning before work and finds him there when she gets off, usually buried in his homework or a book. She kisses her girlfriend with a greeting of gratitude each time she finds them like this. Once, she promises to find something else, but Lana shakes her head. "Let me help," she says.

Johnny's school makes things hard. When he's six, he asks her for the first time, "Is Aunt Lana my mommy?" The question knocks all the air out of her, and she whirls around, eyes wide as she regards her son, nothing but innocence written on his face. "All the other kids have mommies and daddies," Johnny explains, "but I don't have a daddy. And Margot told me that mommies and daddies usually kiss and spend a lot of time together, like you and Aunt Lana, so I thought, maybe, Aunt Lana was my mommy, too."

A sigh, equal parts relieved and troubled, leaves Mary Eunice's lungs. "No, sweetie," she says, "Aunt Lana isn't your mommy. She's your godmother." Perhaps it was uncouth of her to appoint a non-Catholic the godmother of her son, but Mary Eunice has given up most of church traditions. She attends every Sunday, and she prays faithfully, but she knows what she forfeited when she chose to walk away from her position as a nun. "Not every kid has a mommy and a daddy. Some kids just have a mommy or just have a daddy, and that's okay."

It sates him temporarily. When he's nine, he asks her again, more forthright. "Mom? Why don't I have a dad?" She tries to dodge the question, but he's too smart for that—he spends his days with his nose in a book, and he says he wants to become a writer. He's slight for his age, and he wears glasses which put Lana out more money than Mary Eunice likes to consider. "I—I know you say I just don't have one, but everybody has one, and—where's mine? What happened to him?"

Mary Eunice clears her throat, and then she lies through her teeth. "I'm sorry, sweetie." She sits on the couch with him. "Your father was a soldier in the war. Do you remember learning about that in school?" He nods. "We weren't married. He wanted that, but I didn't. I wasn't ready for that. I didn't find out I was pregnant until after he was back overseas. And he never came home."

Johnny is crying. Her heart breaks. The truth would hurt him more. But watching him mourn a man who never existed stings. "Why didn't you tell me about him?"

"His family doesn't know about me, or about you. And we have Aunt Lana. I'm in love with her, now."

"She's not a dad."

"I know. I'm sorry."

He hugs her, and she hugs him back, kissing his forehead and sweeping his thick hair out of his eyes. He likes it long, he says; she worries he says that because he doesn't want to spend money at the barber, but she doesn't challenge him. "Mom? Why do some people like men and some people like women?"

She shrugs. "Some people are left-handed instead of right-handed, honey. There isn't a reason. It just is."

"Did you used to like men, then? With my dad?"

She sucks her teeth. She has never known the touch of a man other than her own son; she can't imagine loving anyone in that intimate way except Lana. "No, sweetheart, I was just confused," she says, because it's easier to explain. "But I love you very much. Where you come from, what happened to your father, those things don't matter to me. Do you understand? I don't think you're a mistake."

"I understand." He hesitates. "Is it okay if I like men?"

Her heart skips a beat. "It's okay for you to like whoever you want."

He nods, considering. "What was his name? My dad?"

Mary Eunice answers without thinking, mind on auto-pilot, just wishing for the conversation to end. "Oliver."

She later relays all of the lies to Lana so they'll be consistent. "You couldn't have picked a different name?" Lana fumes. "Millions of names—you could've picked any random one from the Bible! It would've been believable!"

She holds up her hands in self-defense. "I panicked! I wasn't expecting him to ask me anything! I'm not a very good liar!" Perhaps it was naive of her to think for so long that Johnny would just accept his life without a father, never questioning his own origins, but she hadn't prepared any fibs to hold him off. "I thought I had a few years left before he would…" She drifts off. Her heart sinks, and she utters a soft sigh. "I was foolish enough to think I would be enough for him." Lana takes her by the hips and tugs her close, murmuring a reassurance, but even her arms can't banish the sorrowful notion from her mind. As Lana kisses her neck, Mary Eunice tilts her head to grant her better access, but she asks in a whisper, "Do you think I made a mistake?" Lana stops and holds so many questions in her eyes, but she doesn't ask any of them. "Do you think—maybe, he would've been better off if we had let him go?"

Lana touches her cheek, cradling it in her hand. She shakes her head. "I don't think there could be a person on this earth better for him than you are. Or better for me. That's the truth."

"Doesn't he deserve a father?"

"He has God. He has you." Lana caresses Mary Eunice's lips under the pad of her thumb. "When you've got God and you've got Mary, you know you're Jesus." Mary Eunice laughs until Lana kisses it away.

…

One day, when Johnny is eleven, Lana's phone rings in the early afternoon. She answers it. "Lana?" Mary Eunice asks. "I'm sorry, I—someone called in, and I can't go home. I've got to cover her shift." Her voice shakes; Lana can hear the exhaustion, imagine it in her azure eyes, and regret poisons her blood. "Could you please pick up Johnny from school? I'm so sorry, I already called Kit, but he's out of town for the week—"

"I can do it," Lana says. "Don't apologize." She always tells Mary Eunice this. It never stops her from apologizing over and over again. "What time will you be home?"

Mary Eunice heaves a sigh. "Tomorrow morning," she whispers in a defeated voice. Lana bites back a snarl. She knows it will only hurt Mary Eunice if she lashes out now. "Tell him I'm sorry. And—oh, he's been struggling with his math homework. Sixth grade math has me stymied, but if you know how to—"

"Mary Eunice," Lana placates. "This might surprise you, but I'm not a terrible babysitter, okay? I'll help him with his math. Maybe I'll even decide he deserves to be fed." Mary Eunice sputters on the other end of the line. "I love you. Take care of yourself."

Her voice is warm in spite of its tiredness. "I love you, too, Lana. Thank you."

At three, Lana drives to the junior high and pulls through, and at the sight of her car, Johnny approaches, a frown on his face. "Aunt Lana? Mom is supposed to pick me up today, isn't she?" His life is a tangle of inconsistencies, and Lana wonders if he deserves a steadier means of living. No, she decides. No one has ever left him at the school; Mary Eunice has to juggle him with her job, but she always ensures he has a roof over his head and food in his belly. Maybe something else would be ideal, but he has never gone hungry.

"Somebody called in at the hospital. You're crashing with me tonight."

His eyes brighten. "Cool!" He slides into the front seat beside her, pushing his too-large glasses up on his nose, which magnify his saucer-like eyes. The sunlight filters onto his freckled face. He has a bruise on the underside of his jaw, which makes Lana trouble her lower lip between her teeth. "Can I read at your house?"

She chuckles, raising an eyebrow. "You can do whatever you want after you finish your homework," she tells him, though he doesn't usually require the prompting; he's a good student. She thanks Julia and Thomas for wearing off on him. "What happened to your face?"

"What happened to your face?" She chokes at the sharp retort. "Sorry—I didn't mean that, I was with Sam—it's hard to turn it off." He massages the bruise on his jaw. "Please don't tell Mom."

Lana has priorities which don't involve Johnny being a smart-ass. He's a reader, after all; he's bound to develop a sense of sarcasm. "Already forgotten. Who hit you?"

He shrugs. "Nobody." She looks at him from the corner of her eye as she drives down the street, careful to observe the droves of children crossing the street on their walks home. At her unwavering look, he sighs. "Tobias Wendell," he mutters. She recognizes the name. "He won't leave me and Sam alone. Him and his cronies. They're a bunch of Socs."

In spite of herself, Lana snorts at the reference. "That would make you a Greaser, then?"

"Stay gold, Ponyboy."

She laughs, and he grins. Like his mother, he sparkles when he's happy; he has a certain glow he takes when the people around him reassure him of his worth. "You're a nerd," she says. "Don't worry about the bullies. One day, they'll be working for you. They'll be your cronies, so to speak. Nerds always get their revenge."

His smile fades a little, but it remains on his face nonetheless. "I don't want anyone to work for me." His feet drum on the floorboards of the car, tapping out a rhythm to the rumble of the motor, syncopating whenever she uses the turn signal. The radio hums, low and soft; she can't remember how long it's been since she turned it off or changed the station. "I want to be a writer, like you."

"You want to be a journalist?" Lana asks.

He nods. "Not a television one, though. You have to be good-looking for that. I want to write books. True stories."

"Where are you going to start?"

"I want to write a book about Mom."

"You think Mom's that interesting?"

"You don't?"

She chuckles. "Most people would say I'm biased." But his interest concerns her. Mary Eunice has lied to him about everything—he doesn't know she was ever a nun. He doesn't know she ever worked at Briarcliff. He thinks she met Lana in high school; he thinks they've been friends since forever and lovers since his conception. If he probes, it could all fall apart. The whole web could unravel. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. "Do you like to write fictional stories, too?"

Johnny doesn't notice her intentional shifting of the subject. "Yeah! Mrs. Summers says I'm the best creative writer in my class. She always reads what I write as an example. Tobias hates it." He seems to draw a great measure of joy from miffing his enemy through his academic superiority. "Me and Sam—"

"Sam and I," Lana corrects on reflex.

"Sam and I are writing a comic together. He's doing the art. And I'm writing the dialogue and the script. Sam's a really talented artist." Johnny's eyes haze, all dreamy, and Lana smiles at him at the sight. "I really like him," he says, a quiet afterthought. "Most boys don't like boys, do they?"

Lana shrugs. "Most boys like girls, I think. But that doesn't mean he does. I used to think your mom liked boys." Your mom used to be married to the biggest man of all time. Your mom used to be married to God. "You never know. You're still young. You'll figure it out."

Johnny nods, but his thoughts race across his face. "Mom says I'm not supposed to tell anyone about you and her, because most people don't understand. What if Sam doesn't understand? What if he doesn't want to be my friend anymore? I still want to be his friend, even if he doesn't like me back."

"Sometimes that's just a risk you have to take. But if he's the type of person who will be angry at you for who you love, is that really the type of person you want to be your friend?" He grunts with agreement at her words.

That night, Lana orders a pizza for them. She brings it to the kitchen table where Johnny has sprawled out with all of his books. He's chewing the end of his pen, staring at a blank piece of paper in a notebook, only his name written at the top; he only glances up when she opens the pizza box. "Oh! Thanks. Pepperoni! Mom hates pepperoni." He picks up one piece with no hesitation, getting red grease all over his hands.

She sits beside him and takes a small piece. "I know. Cheese pizza is boring." She lies to him; she knows Mary Eunice only fibs about liking cheese pizza because of how she feels about money and spending it on unnecessary toppings. "Writer's block?" she asks. "You've been staring at that piece of paper for almost an hour, you know."

He nods, the corners of his eyes creasing. "We have to write an essay about our dads," he mumbles. Oh. "I kept blowing it off, but it's due tomorrow…" Suddenly, the vigor with which he seizes the pizza disappears. His enthusiasm about the pepperoni leaves him, instead a sorrow in his eyes. "I tried to ask Mrs. Summers for a different assignment, but she didn't understand what I meant when I said I didn't have a dad."

"Shitty teacher," Lana says. As he winces at her curse, she apologizes. "Write about your mom."

"I can't. We did an essay over our moms last month. We had to give a presentation and everything, and—ugh, everyone's going to look at me stupid and sorry if I get up in front of them and talk about my dead dad. I don't even have a picture of him to show." He scuffs his toes over the carpet and wipes off the corners of his mouth with the napkin, staring down at the blank piece of paper. "Do you think I could just make something up? Not something too cool, or anything, but just so I don't embarrass myself."

She gives him a soft look. "There's nothing to be embarrassed about, you know. Not everyone has a normal family. If you tell everyone the truth, I guarantee there's at least one other kid in that room who will feel glad that they're not the only one without a dad." She can't believe it's been almost ten years since she caught him from falling in her kitchen, since his tiny arms hugged her so tight. He still likes to give hugs. She has learned to keep herself from tensing, and he has learned to ask first. She doesn't look for a connection in his eyes anymore. She isn't his mother, and she doesn't feel a maternal bond for him, but she loves him the way she should love her godson—perhaps a muted form of love, but present, nonetheless. "Does that make sense?"

He nods. "I still don't know what to write about." He flips the pen in his hand between his fingers. "I have to write about something. Thomas said I could write about Uncle Kit, but I thought that would be weird, since they both wrote about him last year…We all get enough shit from the other kids without making it weird." Lana glares at him for the curse word, and he says, "What? You just said it."

She arches an eyebrow. "I'm allowed to curse. You're not."

Drumming his fingers on the table, he nods, too preoccupied with the assignment to fathom a good response. "Can I write about you?" he asks.

She blinks, taken aback by this suggestion. "What if the teacher wants you to write an essay about your godmother next?" she counters.

"Please, Aunt Lana? If I can't write about you, it's just Aunt Alma and Aunt Grace, and then people really will make fun of me if I tell them one of my old babysitters killed the other one, and Thomas and Julia will kill me. We don't have any other family."

That's not fair, Lana. Let him write about you. Part of her still resents him, his existence, and the thought of him conceptualizing her as a parental figure stings. She severed herself from him from the moment of his birth to give him the best chance at a normal life. But is she not the closest thing to a second parent he has ever known? "You can write about me," she says. "But on one condition." He waits with bated breath. "Make me sound really cool, okay? None of that moody pre-teen lame parent stuff. Make me a real badass. Deal?"

He grins from ear to ear. "Deal!" He high-fives her, and then he sets to work on his essay, pizza left to the wayside.

When he finishes, he brings a book to the couch. This is what she likes best about Johnny, the silence they can share. He doesn't demand for anyone to entertain him. She turns the page of her own book, not expecting him to say anything at all—usually he sits beside her and opens to his bookmarked page, and they spend the final hours waiting for Mary Eunice to get home from work in silence, interrupted only if he encounters an unfamiliar word or concept—but instead, he looks up at her before he even opens his novel. "Aunt Lana?" She dog-ears the page of her book and looks at him. "Can I read your book?"

She frowns. She doesn't understand the question—she thinks he refers to the book in her hand, which she has only gotten halfway through. "I'm kind of in the middle of it."

"No—I mean, the one you wrote."

"Oh." Her blood shivers. He hasn't made her skin freeze like this in a long time, but the chill aches now. She changed Mary Eunice's name in her novel, knowing he would likely one day hear about her book, if he didn't read it himself, but something inside of her smolders at the thought of allowing to Johnny to read about his own father unknowingly. "You'll have to ask your mom." She decides this is the best answer. "You should wait until you're older. You'll understand it better, then."

"It's a true story, isn't it?" She nods. "How much older? I like true stories."

She chuckles at him. "Fifteen," she says. "If your mom says it's okay."

"How would she know if it's okay? She only ever reads her Bible. She never reads good books. It's so boring."

"Don't talk about your mom that way." Lana swats him on top of the head with a rolled up newspaper she'd used to flap the flies away. "She doesn't read well. You know that. Spelling is hard for her. The letters get all jumbled up in her head." She knows Mary Eunice isn't slow, but she also knows Mary Eunice is ashamed of her lacking academic capabilities, the frustrations which drove her to drop out of school and into the arms of the church.

Johnny tries to take the newspaper away from her, but she snatches it back before he can seize it. "I know," he says. "Sam has dyslexia, too. I didn't mean it that way. Just that she doesn't enjoy a good book."

Lana places the newspaper back on the end table, safe out of range to keep them from getting into a sword fight with it. "She does, though. She doesn't like to read with her eyes, because it frustrates her, but she loves to hear you tell stories. That's why she enjoys church so much." Johnny regards her with wonder mixed with confusion. Lana clears her throat. "Church is just glorified storytelling, isn't it? It's the only way she can get someone to read to her without having to ask for it." The epiphany sinks over his face, enlightening him with each inch it travels across his skin. His eyes share the color of Lana's, but his expressiveness comes from Mary Eunice without a shadow of a doubt. Lana needs a moment to collect herself with the next words she speaks, a half-lie, but the important part is true. "I read my entire book aloud to her when she was pregnant with you. From front to back. She was the first person to hear every word, before it ever touched a shelf. She loved it."

Several weeks later, Mary Eunice comes armed with the full plot of the Outsiders, Johnny's favorite book, prepared to debate in the defense of her favorite character, the soft young man who shares her son's name. While Johnny spends the night at Sam's house, Lana and Mary Eunice draw swords, the fictional Johnny versus Dally, the rough around the edges greaser who martyrs himself in grief. They bicker, and then they debate, and then they wrestle, and at some point, their clothes come off, and Lana whispers, "Dally is better," right before she dips her tongue into her girlfriend's belly button. Mary Eunice howls with laughter. Lana never admits to giving Johnny the tip, but each time Mary Eunice approaches her with a new book completed, she thanks the meager mercy of the heavens for giving him a heart as soft as the woman who adopted him.

…

In the summer before his sophomore year of high school, Johnny appears on her doorstep on the hottest day of the year, carrying a gallon of milk in each hand and a heavy backpack weighing him down. She opens the door to let him in. "Johnny—" She sweeps him with her gaze, sunburnt and sweating, flushed from head to toe. "What the hell? It's too hot for you to be outside—what are you doing with two gallons of milk?"

He waddles through her door, panting heavily. "It's cooler out there than it is in the apartment," he mutters. Lana lifts the backpack from him—it's cool to the touch, but weighed down, filled to the brim with frozen and cold goods. "The jackass landlord killed the power. He said we have until next week—" Tears sting the corner of his eyes, filling them, and he chokes up. He stops talking until he can manage it without weeping. "Mom just went grocery shopping yesterday. I got as much as I could out of there, so it wouldn't all melt—the meat might be spoilt, I don't know. The whole apartment turned into an oven. I thought my face would melt off before I got out of there."

Following him to the kitchen, Lana unzips the backpack and empties it on the counter. "You should've called me." He opens the fridge and the freezer, temporarily letting the cold air fan over him before he begins putting away Mary Eunice's frozen edibles. "Why didn't she tell me she was behind again?"

He sighs. "I don't know. Honestly, I think she forgot this time. Her goddamn boss—he's working her six days a week." Lana's heart aches. She has seen less of Mary Eunice lately—and more of the dark circles under her eyes when she comes around—but she hadn't realized the gravity of the situation. "Seven when he can wrench it out of her. Sixty-five, seventy hours a week. He's threatening to get rid of her if she can't keep up, and she thinks she needs the money. I offered to help, I did, but she won't take anything from me—" His voice breaks. "She's afraid I won't be able to go to college, she wants me to save—I don't even want to go to college if she's still going to be living like this without me—"

"Hey." Lana places a hand on his arm. "You're a good student. You're going to college. You'll get good scholarships if you apply for them." His skin is hot to the touch. She can't tell if the tracks on his face are from tears, sweat, or snot. "I opened a savings account for you when you were born. It hasn't been touched except for deposits since then. Your mom knows that it's for you. You don't have to worry about affording college."

He averts her eyes from hers, staring into the fridge. Goosebumps have appeared all over his arms and legs. "What's going to happen to her?" he asks. "When I'm gone?"

"I'll take care of her. Whatever she wants. If she wants to keep her apartment, or if she wants to move in here—I won't let her want for anything. Don't worry about her." He shudders with a half-suppressed sob. Mary Eunice has never told him that boys don't cry, but he learned it, anyway, at school, and even with their reassurance, he finds it hard to let himself break. "Do you understand? It's your mom's job to worry about you. Not the other way around. I'll take care of her." Johnny shivers, covering his mouth with his hand. "Go sit down," she says. "Read for a little bit. I'll put this up, and then I'll run to the bank so your mom can pay the rent and utilities when she gets home."

He obeys her, resting there on the couch with fat tears running down his cheeks. When she finishes putting away the salvaged frozen goods, she brings him a bottle of water. His hands shake too hard for him to open it, so she cracks it open for him, and he drinks with the same fervor he demonstrated when she nursed him after his birth. "Don't make yourself sick," she cautions, and then he slows down, but he still has less than half of a bottle left when he finishes. "You can take a shower, if you want. Cool off a little."

He nods, eyes averted, swollen and sorrowful. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to barge in on you like this."

"If there's ever an excuse to barge in, I think baking in your own house is it."

A tiny, wry smile creases his lips. "Thank you." She leans back, preparing to stand, but he asks, "Aunt Lana?" and she pauses. His lower lip trembles. "Can I hug you?" She nods.

He's wet from head to toe and smells like a boys' locker room, but he buries his face in the crook of her neck and weeps. She pats him on the back. Through his shirt, she can feel the ribs of his slight form; he still has grown no taller than her, and she wonders if he will remain like her, or if he will go through another growth spurt to look more like his father. She prays not. "It's okay," she soothes him. "It's okay. I promise." She mops a hand through his sweaty, dark hair, which falls around his shoulders.

By the time Mary Eunice comes to her house, Johnny has fallen asleep on the couch. Mary Eunice unlocks the door with her key and enters to Lana draping the couch throw over him and tucking a pillow under his head. "Lana? What's he doing here?" Her eyes are wide with fear. "Is he hurt?"

Lana shakes her head and greets her with a kiss, but Mary Eunice dodges it; she doesn't mess around where her son is concerned. "He's fine," Lana says. She tucks a stray lock of blonde hair behind Mary Eunice's ear. "The power went out in the apartment. He packed up all of the frozen goods and came here." Mary Eunice's face falls, and she closes her eyes, a shaky sigh leaving her lips. Lana offers a tender kiss right to her lips. She caves, shuffling near to Lana and hugging her, too weak and exhausted to clutch tight. "It's okay. You can pay the rent and the utilities tomorrow."

The reassurance doesn't keep Mary Eunice from weeping. Lana tucks her into bed and then sits beside her, offering her own chest as a pillow; she knows Mary Eunice is too tired to make love now, even if Johnny weren't just a wall away. Mary Eunice shivers. "I'm sorry," she weeps. "It doesn't matter what I do—I'm always behind on something…" She sniffles. Snot runs all over the front of Lana's shirt. "I'm no good at this, Lana, I never should've left the church." Lana hushes her, more out of fear of Johnny overhearing than anything else, but it still unsettles her, her hopelessness. "Sister Jude was right. I'm just—I'm just stupid. I can't even read, how am I supposed to be raising a child?"

Lana kisses the top of her head, but she doesn't interrupt. She allows Mary Eunice to finish. "I'm a horrible nurse. I can't stand up for myself, I get paid less than everyone else, I'm a total doormat, but if I say anything, he'll f-fire me, and then I'll be in deep shit."

"No, you won't. You'll be here, with me." Lana smooths her hair back. "You've just got a few years before Johnny goes to college, and then you can move in with me. Once he has his own place, you can leave behind that horrible apartment forever."

Mary Eunice shakes her head. "I'm not going to be able to send Johnny to college! He's always trying to help me pay the bills—I don't take it, but I know sometimes he puts it in my purse and he thinks I won't notice, like I won't notice twenty dollars magically appearing there."

"You don't have to send Johnny to college. I have a savings account for him. You know that. It should be more than enough to cover tuition and board with some left over. I've been putting as much as I can in it with every paycheck since he was christened."

Big azure eyes flick up to her, mesmerized, awestruck by her words. Her pink lips, swollen from weeping, buffer against one another with shock. She grunts a few broken syllables before she manages to say in a squeak, "But…" She blinks hard. "I thought you pulled from that when you paid our bills—it's got to be almost empty by now, as often as I can't make ends meet."

Lana shakes her head. "No, sunshine, no." She uses her thumbs to wipe away the streaks of tears on her cheeks. "I haven't touched that account since I opened it."

Mary Eunice touches Lana's cheek, cradling it in her own palm. "But—that was all for Johnny, because otherwise I would live with you… because you're his godmother…"

Nuzzling into Mary Eunice's palm, Lana kisses it. "It was for both of you. You're my family now." She doesn't think of Johnny as her son, but she loves him. She isn't certain when it developed. The days when she can't stand to see him, when his presence makes her chest swell with anxiety, are few and far between. Perhaps the long-term exposure has numbed her at this point, or perhaps she loves Mary Eunice so much that she must by default also love her son. He's just like her, now. She can almost forget the unholy union which bore him when she sees them together, sees how he mirrors Mary Eunice's mannerisms, the way he teases his hair, the way he shivers when he cries, the way he burrows his face into her neck and wraps his arms around in that way when he hugs her. "I love you, Mary Eunice."

Mary Eunice cries some more. She resists taking the money Lana gives to her, protesting, "I can't—I can't take anything else from you," until Lana kisses her and tucks the money into the pocket of her skirt. She accepts the kiss and heaves a wearied sigh. "Johnny's birthday is next month."

"He can have whatever he wants."

"You can't buy it." Lana blinks in surprise. "He wants to read your book," Mary Eunice explains. "He says you told him he can read it when he's fifteen—I just wanted to make sure it was okay with you before I gave him my copy. If you think it's okay… I trust you."

Lana traces the faint freckles on her neck with her index finger. "Either he's going to read it now, with our blessing," she says, "or he's going to sneak and read it behind your back, or he's going to wait until he's eighteen and read it then."

"Johnny's not like that."

Arching an eyebrow, Lana chuckles. "Don't be naive. He's a teenager who likes books. Be glad he's not a teenager who likes drugs." Mary Eunice laughs, nuzzling into Lana's chest, stringing her arms around her neck. "When I was his age, I would do anything to get my hands on the book I wanted. Nineteen Eighty Four was a big forbidden title, then. Anything by Mark Twain. Once, I started babysitting just so I could get out of the house long enough to finish the book I was reading without my parents noticing."

Mary Eunice snorts. "You sound like a horrible babysitter."

"Oh, I hated it. All of the kids hated me. I could never keep a job."

"You're okay with him reading it, then?" Lana nods. "Thank you. I won't let him ask you any questions. But I can't stop him from giving you a big hug, because you know he'll want to."

Lana grins. "I know."

They celebrate Johnny's birthday with a cake. Lana gives him a stack of books, which makes Mary Eunice give her a withering look. "You better get him a bookshelf for Christmas. He can use the library, you know. It's a ten minute walk from here." Johnny eagerly tears into the tall stack of books, picking up each one and devouring the back cover and smelling the new book smell.

Wrapping an arm around her waist, Lana kisses her neck, and the frown vanishes from her face, replaced by her usual smile. "He gets a bookshelf for Christmas," she promises, "only because this apartment looks like a tornado went through the library and deposited half of the books here in a random order." At the bottom of the stack of books, Johnny lifts up Maniac. Mary Eunice swats Lana, a peeved look of, That's what I got him! on her face. "I thought he deserved his own copy. Make it worth more in a few years."

Johnny flips open the front cover. "To Johnny," he reads aloud the note she has written in the inside of it, "thank you for your patience in the years I wasn't able to share this with you. I know you've heard rumors, and I appreciate you keeping an open mind. I'm ready, now, for you to know my story. With all my love, your godmother, Lana Winters." He hugs her so tight, she can hardly breathe, and before he relinquishes her, he peeks at Mary Eunice with wide, pleading eyes to ask, "Mom, can I—"

"Absolutely not! No reading at the dinner table. I don't care that it's your birthday."

For the next three days, Lana hears radio silence from Johnny. On the second day, Mary Eunice comes to her house from work. "Is it okay if I stay here tonight?" she asks. "I know Johnny won't have gotten his nose out of that book yet. He told me this morning not to worry about dinner."

Lana kisses her. "I'm glad to have you." Mary Eunice's wearied body receives all of her love, though she doesn't offer her own in return. Lana doesn't mind. She knows her girlfriend works too hard for too little; she doesn't want to be another stressor in her life. "He starts school after Labor Day, right?" Mary Eunice nods. "So a few more weeks." She hums. "I'm sorry, I know you're tired. I'll shut up."

"Mm…" Mary Eunice blinks up at her with groggy eyes. "I like hearing your voice when I fall asleep." Her eyelashes drag across Lana's skin. "I like it when you hold me like this." She kisses Lana's neck, a light thing. "I want to do this every night, once Johnny goes to college. I want us to be like this, for real."

"I promise," Lana says. "You'll get as much of this as you want."

Her eyes shut, drifting lazily but landing hard enough for Lana to know they won't open again. "Will you read to me?" Mary Eunice asks. Lana opens the book on the bedside table and begins to read right where she left off in the middle of the chapter. Within minutes, Mary Eunice falls asleep.

On the third day, while Mary Eunice is at work, Lana sits outside in the fair weather, summer turning to autumn, and reads out in the breeze where she can enjoy the end of the bitterly hot summer. She sees him coming, because he's running—he's always been a quick kid, but he's all legs, so it's easy to pick him out like a baby horse that hasn't yet grown into itself. She stands to greet him, but he wraps her up in another hug like the one he gave her on his birthday. All of the muscles in her back tense; she didn't have time to prepare herself, and her body shudders its distaste at the sudden arms around her. He breaks apart at the feeling. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—Are you okay?" He's been crying. She nods and hugs him—for the first time in his life, she hugs him, and they both relax.

She takes him inside. "Do you have any questions?" she asks.

"Mom said I wasn't allowed to ask any questions." But his eyes burn with curiosity, the insatiable need of any reader to know more than the writer revealed in the book.

Lana flashes a smile. "I won't answer if I don't want to, alright? You can go ahead and ask." She wonders if she will regret allowing him this freedom, but she knows the questions will eat him alive if he doesn't ask them; they will come out, eventually, and she prefers to hear them now.

He bites his lip. Then, he says, "Wendy," and Lana wonders how long it's been since she heard someone else say that name. She decorates the grave once a month, sometimes with Mary Eunice at her side, never with Johnny accompanying—she cannot bring herself to take the son of Wendy's murderer to her gravesite. "Was she… your girlfriend? Before Mom?" Lana nods. "Is that why you never sold the house to move in with us? Because she picked out this house?"

Part of the reason. Lana wants to say, so she does. "Part of the reason." I still have days when looking at you is unbearable. No matter how you're your mother's son, I have days when I see him in you. I have to be able to get away from you without hurting you. "It isn't safe for your mother and me to be together in an apartment. It would be much easier for someone to catch us if we lived so close to other people, and a landlord could throw us out without notice. It's safer for us here."

"Oh." He drums his toes in the carpet and curls them there, tangling with the shag fibres. "Did your baby have a name?"

Lana shakes her head. Lying is almost too easy. "I was giving him away. They had already positioned an adoptive family for him anonymously, but I never met them. It was their loss, not mine." Perhaps it sounds cold. It is cold. She doesn't care. She needs to be as honest with him as possible, so she is.

He pauses, thinking long and deep. Then he asks, "Why didn't you talk about my mom at all? Where was she? Why didn't she get you out of the asylum—or notice you were missing?"

Again, she lies. "She was busy with your father, then. She knew about me and Wendy, but she wasn't sure about herself, yet. She was confused. And she was very, very sorry when she heard what had happened to me. She stayed with me until you were born, a week after my baby."

"If you and Mom are together, is it possible they could try to put you both back in the sanitarium?" Johnny bites his lip; Lana can read the fear in his eyes, the panic at the notion of losing his mother to the legal system. Don't frighten him, she cautions herself.

"It's possible, but I doubt it. They confined me because I was nosy and wouldn't stay out of their business. It just so happened that they had grounds to hold me, legally, and a person willing to sign me over."

"Do you resent her for that? Wendy?"

"I don't resent her for anything, no." Lana drums her fingers on the arm of the couch, nervous with the direction the conversation had taken. She hasn't talked about Wendy in so long. At the mention of her, her heart aches with longing, and she wishes Mary Eunice were here for her to discuss her hurting parts. "She wouldn't have been put in that position if I hadn't gone to the asylum in the first place."

He hesitates. "Are you saying you blame yourself?"

This question gives her pause. She has to avert her eyes from his face to consider what he asked her. He asked it with such gentleness, like he didn't want to ask it at all, and his face is as soft as his mother's, as understanding, as loving. "Not as much as I did at one time," she answers after a silence. "But—yes. It's something I'm working on. Something your mother helps me with a lot."

A frown tickles his lips before tugging them down into a full pout, an internal debate playing on his face while he decides whether or not he can ask her his next question. Lana braces herself, but she expects worse than what he asks. "Do you love her more than my mom?"

Lana shakes her head. "Not more," she says. "Just differently."

That answer sates him, and they prepare dinner for when Mary Eunice gets home.

…

In the last week of summer, Johnny practically lives at her house. "Sorry," he says one day, backpack filled with books. "We just got new downstairs neighbors, and they have a newborn baby, and I can't focus—I don't mean to—" She waves him off into silence and ushers him into the house. "Thanks. Sam's on vacation. I hate just sitting around the house alone. My manager doesn't need me at work enough. My brain is wasting away."

"Clearly not, if you've read that many books." Lana gestures to the backpack. "Is that this week's load?"

"Last week's. After I finish this one, I'm going to walk to the library and take them all back."

"Alright. I was about to start lunch. Any preferences?"

"Is starving until Mom gets home a preference?"

Lana laughs. "No, it's not. You'll eat my tasteless food, and you'll enjoy it. That's your punishment for never leaving here." He rolls his eyes. "When did you become such a smart ass? You didn't get it from your mom."

"It's all the books you gave me. They made me smart enough to develop sarcasm." But in spite of her teasing, Johnny leaves his book in the floor and heads into the kitchen with her. He has learned to help Mary Eunice cook. "Are we making spaghetti?" She shrugs and nods, and he puts a pot of water on the stove to boil while she warms the sauce in another pan on the stove. "Mom loves spaghetti. I think it's her favorite meal ever."

She makes it so often because it's cheap. Lana doesn't tell him this; Mary Eunice finally agreed to let him give her part of his paycheck, and she knows he's proud of himself for providing a little to support his family. "Then you'll have to help me make it just the way she likes it," she says instead.

After lunch, Johnny spends a few hours finishing his book while Lana scripts the next episode of her show and the topics she wants to explore when filming begins again. "I'm going to the library," Johnny tells her. "I have the list of what I'm looking for, so I should be in and out quick." Lana hums, not really listening to him—he's fifteen, after all, more than old enough to take himself to the library and back without her breathing down his neck. She isn't sure what time it is when he leaves.

She is sure, however, when she looks up from her script and the clock reads five PM, that he should have returned by now. She stands from her hunched position over the table, popping her back, and walks to the window, peeking out at the late afternoon sky. As far as she can see, no one travels the sidewalks. This isn't good. She goes to the telephone and asks the operator, "Can you connect me to the library?" When the librarian answers, she says, "Hi—this is Lana Winters." She hopes the librarian has seen them in the library together enough to feel comfortable giving her information about his whereabouts. "My godson, Johnny McKee, is he there? Or have you seen him? He walked there awhile ago, and he hasn't come back yet."

The librarian tuts, like she's trying to remember. "I saw him, I did, but it's been an hour ago, at least. Diane? Did you check out Johnny McKee? Teenage boy, shoulder-long dark hair, skinny as a maypole, big honking glasses." Lana can't hear the other woman's answer, but the woman on the phone says, "Yes, he was in here, but he checked out forty-five minutes ago. We'll have someone glance around outside for him, alright? See if he wound up reading under the trees or something."

Lana pinches the bridge of her nose. Fuck. "Yes. Thank you, thank you." She clears her throat. "Bye." She hangs up the phone. Both eyes on the clock, she waits ten more minutes, praying, hoping, for Johnny to stumble through the front door, or for the librarian to call her back and confirm she had found him. I lost Mary Eunice's kid. Her heart in her throat, she watches the second hand tick by, every sixty seconds burning her. It isn't like him to wander off. Johnny had never made friends easily. He stuck close to the few kids he had known since entering school, Julia and Sam and Thomas; he would never take off with total strangers. He was a mama's boy. Lana paces, her hand in her hair, across the floor of the living room. What should I do?

She looks up to the clock again. Mary Eunice gets home in half an hour. She clears her throat and tilts her head back. No, she can't wait for Mary Eunice to get home. Scribbling a note, she writes, "Gone to the library. Be home soon," and signs her name before she darts out the front door and heads down the street she knows Johnny takes to the library. "Johnny?" she calls each time she heads down a new block. "Johnny?" It takes her twenty minutes to reach the library, but she sees no sign of him. Oh my god. Lana paces outside the front of the building, hoping for him to make an appearance, but he doesn't; people filter in and out of the library, all of them ogling at her where she sweats and dances from one side of the sidewalk to the other.

Finally, a man approaches her. "Ma'am, can I… help you?" She glances up at him. He has his wallet in his hand. "I've got a dime, if you need to make a phone call. Are you waiting for someone?"

She shakes her head. "No—No, I'm fine." I'm not fine. I've got to head back home. I've got to keep looking for him. I've got to call the police. "Thank you." She walks away from her, a slight jog in her step as she escapes the clutches of the well-intentioned man. The humid late summer air clings to her, beading on her skin alongside her sweat. She marches down the main street, peeking at every house and business. "Johnny?" she calls, her voice growing in desperation and in volume.

At the mouth of a side alley, she spies a sneaker—a red sneaker, one she recognizes, because she bought it for him. "Johnny?" She screams his name down the alley, which ends in a dead end and dumpster; her voice echoes back at her. She hears him before she sees him, not a word but a bellow of pain. Without thought, Lana races down the alley, her shoes crunching in old glass; he rounds the dumpster, blood running down his face, and greets her, but he stumbles, and it slows him enough for two other boys to jump on him. She lunges forward to catch him, some part of her remembering the piece of herself which had scooped him up when he was a toddler and kept him from falling on her kitchen floor when he tried to wear her high heels, but she falls short, and he lands on his face on the asphalt.

Johnny thrashes where he lies on the ground in the mess of broken glass. One boy smashes his bleeding face onto the ground. The other sits on top of him with both knees. But they look at her, gaping, the expression of uh-oh palpable on their faces. Johnny tries to wriggle enough to look at her. "Aunt Lana—" His voice breaks off, weeping. The boys have torn his clothing and left gashes all over his body. "Watch out, there's—" The boy slaps him so he shuts up.

A third boy saunters around the dumpster with a switchblade in his hand. Lana's breath hitches in her chest. She doesn't run—she can't. She won't leave Johnny here. If she runs—and it's unlikely she can outrun three teenage boys, she knows—every minute she spends trying to call the police is a minute they can kill him. The boy fingers his knife. "Keep the faggot quiet," he says to his henchmen.

"Tobias—" Lana remembers this name. "Tobias, we should get outta here, before the cops show up!" He ignores the other boy and instead approaches Lana; he stands a head taller than her, brawnier across the shoulders, a fat gut wobbling whenever he walks. When she must crane her neck to look at his face, he halts, near enough for her to smell his cologne, but she does not take a step back. She doesn't even blink. Her heart thunders so loud, she almost can't hear the boys speak. "Tobias, leave 'er alone! She's just an old broad! You know the rules—we don't mess with girls."

"Maybe it's time the rules change." His shadow blocks out the sun, blotting out the sky; he covers her the way Thredson once did. He holds the knife out to her. The blade touches the surface of the skin on her throat where she already bears a scar—where another man tried and failed to slit her throat. "You don't have much fight in you, do you, old lady?" His foul smelling breath wafts across her face. "How much fight can I wring out of you?"

"More than you've got," Lana mutters.

One of the boys on the ground curses and flings backward, gripping a bleeding hand where Johnny sank his teeth into the fleshy palm. "Don't touch her!" Johnny shrieks. "Don't touch her!" His desperate scream holds no threat, only pain, but he bucks against his last restraint like a frightened wild horse bound in a lasso for the first time. "Leave her alone!"

Tobias turns his back on her. "Dude, I told you to keep the queer quiet!" Like a cat, Lana pounces on his back. The weight catches him off-balance. He dives to the ground, catching himself with his hands; the blade cuts into his palm, and he howls like a wounded animal caught in the trap. He grapples for her, rolling beneath her, trying to get on top of her and pin her down. "Crazy bitch!" Lana drapes, weak and useless, over him for a moment, just long enough for him to pitch her to the side so she can seize the knife by the handle.

Johnny wails her name, bleating like a lost lamb, but his voice dies off in retching. She bounces back to her feet, brandishing the knife at the three boys; she starts by pointing at the one who has just stomped on the crotch of Johnny's pants so he collapses in his own vomit in the broken glass. "Are you done?" she asks in a low whisper. The two younger boys nod, but the third holds his head tall, jaw set, both eyes pinned on the knife, trying to figure out how he can win it back from her. "If you ever lay a finger on my godson—ever again, or any of his friends, or his mother, or anyone else you think would get to him—I swear to god, I will castrate you with this knife right here and make you eat your balls, and you can explain to your mothers why they won't have any grandchildren. Get the hell out of here."

The two younger boys dart away. The third remains. "Bitch, you don't even know how to use that." He takes two confident steps toward her. Johnny tries to wrap himself around the boy's ankle to hold him back, but the boy kicks him square in the face without even looking down. Lana waits for him to reach for her, which he does. She snaps the knife down on the back of his exposed arm. "Ow!" Snapping back, he withdraws his bleeding arm. "What's your problem, you psycho bitch?"

"My problem?" Lana stands back and laughs bitterly. "I don't have a problem. You're the one who picks on smaller boys so you feel better about your tiny cock." His face fumes bright red. He lunges for her. She side-steps and hooks out her leg so he stumbles. Shoving him from behind, he lands square on his face. He groans, long and deep. "Get the hell out of here, before I decide to call your parents and tell them what you were doing back here—where you really got that cut, and what happened to your father's switchblade."

He doesn't need any more motivation. As he stumbles back to his feet, he staggers back up the alley, not so much as glancing back at her or Johnny. Folding the blade back into the handle and tucking it into the pocket of her skirt, Lana kneels beside Johnny. He peeks up at her with awestruck eyes, brown and loving. "You found me," he whispers. Blood runs out of his mouth and from his nose. "That was really badass." She takes him under the arms. He winces as she struggles to lift him, but neither of them utter a complaint. Once she props him up in a sitting position, she moves his head by the chin, looking at his cheek, where the broken glass ground his flesh to a pulp. "Please don't tell Mom," he whispers.

"What?"

"I—I don't want her to worry…" He coughs. It makes him wince and touch his own sore chest. "Tell her I got hit by a car or something…"

Lana touches the other cheek, cut but not as horribly as the other cheek. "I've got to tell her the truth. She deserves to know." Fat tears roll from his eyes. He hisses as they burn in all of the cuts covering his face. "Come here. Lean on me. You've got to stand up." She hoists him under the arms, and he fights to climb to his feet, whole face twisting in agony, one hand flying to the crotch of his pants. Vomit streaks down his torn clothes; the stench permeates from him. "Are you okay to walk? Is anything broken?" He shakes his head as his pallor whitens.

A walk which usually takes fewer than ten minutes takes them thirty-five minutes, gradually slowing as all of the adrenaline leaves Lana's wearied body. She aches from tussling with the boys like a teenager again. Her body burns. She regrets letting the largest boy drop her so effortlessly just in an attempt to get the knife from him. When they stop to rest at one stop sign, less than a block away from Lana's house, he whispers, "You didn't have to fight for me like that." He reclines his head on her shoulder. With each passing minute, he grows heavier, and Lana doesn't know if it's because her muscles are tired or if it's because he's leaning harder on her, struggling to hold up his own weight. "You could've run off 'n called the cops. I wouldn't have been mad. I was worried they were about to kill you."

"I was worried they were about to kill you," Lana counters. "I couldn't have left you there. Three on one isn't a fair fight. It might have taken ten or fifteen minutes for the cops to get there. There's a lot that can happen." His long hair frames his bleeding face, swollen lips and twisted nose gleaming like the setting sun. "Besides," she says, a teasing afterthought, "Mary Eunice would kill me if I let anything happen to you."

He chuckles, sad and weak. "Thank you," he croaks, voice thick and nasally with his own blood.

On her porch, Lana struggles to open the front door, fumbling with it with weak, sweaty hands before it opens. She staggers into the house, dragging Johnny behind her, where he can barely lift his feet. Mary Eunice stands from the couch, turning off the television. "Thank God, I was starting to worry—" She cuts herself off mid-sentence at the sight of the two of them. "Oh my word."

The last few feet between Lana and the couch seem insurmountable, but she manages, shoving Johnny onto it. She sways on her feet. Mary Eunice catches her from behind. "Lana! Lana, sit down—oh, my goodness, what happened?" Mary Eunice holds her, so instead of collapsing, she folds over on top of herself in the floor. "Johnny? What happened to you both?"

He lifts his head from the couch. "Tobias," he murmurs. Mary Eunice sits beside him on the couch, making a faint noise. "He jumped me on the way home from the library…" His eyes drowse. "Aunt Lana found me, when she realized I was gone, and—totally kicked their asses, it was so awesome, Mom." From the faint keening Mary Eunice produces, she doesn't share Johnny's definition of awesome. He leans against her.

Mary Eunice looks down at Lana in the floor, and she crawls to the edge of the couch and struggles to pull herself up. Mary Eunice meets her halfway and drags her up. "Lana?" she whispers. "Are you okay?"

"I'm almost fifty years old and I got drop-kicked by a teenage football player," Lana mutters, but she rests her head against Mary Eunice's. An arm wraps around her waist. "I've never been better." She plants her dry lips on the side of her face, a soft kiss. Mary Eunice kisses her, real and desperate and sad and frightened. "We're okay." Lana brushes her shaky hand along her lover's face. "We're okay. Nothing's broken. We just need to rest a bit, and then we'll wash up."

Johnny, likewise, reclines on his mother, breathing through his open mouth. "Mhm," he agrees. "We're okay, Mom."

Mary Eunice bows her head to kiss the top of his head, an arm around either person. "I love you both." She shakes with tears. Lana wants to kiss them away and squeeze her grief and helplessness right out of her, but she can barely lift her head. "I'm so sorry. I—I'm going to call the school on Monday. I'm going to talk to them. This can't happen again. If they won't do anything about it, I'll send you to a different school."

"Don't worry about it, Mom. Aunt Lana scared 'em good. Besides, Tobias jumps on anybody who can't outrun him."

"I'm your mom. It's my job to keep you safe." Mary Eunice's voice breaks. "I have to protect you."

Lana snuggles against her in spite of her own sweaty, overheated body. "Then make him join the track team. Nobody will run him down ever again. Right?" She's half-drunk on her own exhaustion as she says this, but to her surprise, Johnny sees the validity of the idea, and Mary Eunice cheers for him finally joining an extracurricular activity.

Johnny is the fastest kid on the track team without a shadow of a doubt. Lana drives him to his practices when Mary Eunice can't get out of work, but his mom makes it to every meet. They make banners bearing his name. They become the rowdiest parents in the bleachers. He wins state, and he does it again, and then he does it again his senior year, making a record of the student with the most state wins under his belt. At his last competition, Thomas and Julia pile into the bleachers as well, all screaming their support for Johnny McKee, number thirty-three, running five paces ahead of all of the other sprinters.

He wins an athletic scholarship and an academic scholarship to his first-choice college in Augusta. When he leaves, Mary Eunice turns off the air conditioning in the apartment and unplugs all of the appliances, emptying the fridge; she moves in with Lana. On the first night, they make love. Their fingers have memorized the maps of one another's bodies by now, but it's always something new for them, always a new sensation or a new level of adoration. "You should quit your job," Lana says, lazily drawing shapes on Mary Eunice's back.

She looks at Lana and chuckles. "Johnny's coming home for Christmas, you know. And for the summer. I'm still paying rent on my apartment." She eases her head on top of Lana's breast, tongue flicking across its bud with a teasing show of effort.

"You can get a part-time job and save up for that. He'll be ready to move out in two years at the most." Lana gazes down at her. "He'll be glad to see you quit it." Mary Eunice questions her with an arched brow. "Once," she says, "he came here crying because you were overworking yourself. Because you didn't feel like anything you did was good enough, and he didn't know how to help you." Mary Eunice's azure eyes soften into goo with affection for her son. "He'll be glad to know that place isn't abusing you anymore."

The next day, Mary Eunice walks away from her career for the second time in her life, this time leaving her job of eighteen years. That night, they crack open the champagne. "Somehow I keep leaving workplaces to take care of you," Mary Eunice teases over the bottle, winking to her girlfriend. "How do you explain that?" Lana wraps her arms around her from behind and kisses her neck. Mary Eunice giggles and whirls around. "I feel so free! I'm never going to have to see my horrible boss again! It's just us, now! We can talk about whatever we want—" She cuts herself off, and her eyes widen. "We can make love on every solid surface in this house, oh, Lana, the possibilities are endless!"

Lana bursts out laughing, but Mary Eunice pushes her against the counter. "Oof," she says as her butt strikes it. "You're serious?"

"I'm dead serious."

"Aren't you going to get bored of me eventually?"

"Never." Mary Eunice lunges for a kiss, which Lana grants with a grin. She nibbles on her lover's lower lip. "Mm, Lana…" She breaks the kiss. Her stomach rumbles aloud. A blush courses over her cheeks, faint and pink. "But maybe, after we eat?"

They make love on the couch, rather than in the kitchen, as they both agree it's easier. Afterward, Lana flicks on the television, and Mary Eunice lies on top of her, both of them watching a rerun of The Twilight Zone. "Am I supposed to feel bad?" Mary Eunice asks. "That Johnny is gone? Empty nest syndrome, or—whatever it is they call it?" Lana looks at her, a question in her eyes. "I miss him, of course! I miss his morning hugs. I miss hearing him and Sam talk on the phone before bed every night. I miss him waking up in a thunderstorm and getting in bed with me, because—because he hates the sound of thunder…" She drifts off, looking wistful. "But I'm not—I'm not destroyed, without him. I thought I would feel empty with him gone. I miss the sound of his voice, but at the same time, I'm—I'm so relieved that I made it this far. That he's a good man, and he doesn't know anything about himself."

Lana brushes a lock of hair behind her ear. "You know," she says, "when he was born, I looked at him, and I thought, 'If anyone can crush all of the evil out of this little bastard, Mary Eunice can.'" Her eyes widen, appalled, but she doesn't interrupt. "You did it. You made him a good person. He's soft, and he's gentle, and he's kind, and he's smart. I could never have treated him with enough compassion to bring out all of those traits in him."

Mary Eunice's shocked look softens. "I never expected you to care about him at all," she admits. "It took me awhile, even—once the newness wore off, you know. First, I was like a kid who got a new babydoll, and I was happy with my new toy, but then I realized that the babydoll actually needed its diaper changed for real. It scared me to death, wondering—wondering what I had gotten myself into. If I could help him at all, if I could make him happy…" She quivers with a breath, the way Lana always knows she's about to cry. Lana laces her hands around her waist. "When he was eight months old, I had this horrible dream that he was a grownup, and I walked in on him—he was cutting you up into pieces. And he turned to me, and he just jumped at me, and I woke up in this cold sweat wondering if one of us would be his first victim, and it—it took me months to get over it. I moved him into the other bedroom and started locking my bedroom door, like he was going to get out of his crib and kill me."

Lana wipes the tears from her cheeks. "But then, when he was two, he caught a frog, and he—he was so little, he didn't know he was squeezing too hard, I wasn't watching him close enough. Until he started crying, because it was dead. And he just held it all close, like you hold a baby, and told it how sorry he was. I still remember how he said, 'I didn't mean to kill it, Mommy!'" She laughs, wry and sad. "And—I wasn't afraid anymore, after that. He was so upset he had hurt that frog. It just broke his heart. I knew, then, he had a bigger heart than I had ever imagined."

Lana curls her fingers in her girlfriend's hair, stroking it, combing through it. "I always thought you loved him at first sight. You always acted like it. Like you adored him. Like I had given you the gift you had always wanted."

Sad, round eyes land on her face. "Oh, Lana. I knew if I let you think anything else, you would never stop blaming yourself for giving him to me." Her pink lips form a smile, tender and loving; Lana doesn't think anyone has ever looked at her with such love in their eyes, and here she is, basking in Mary Eunice's sunlight, drinking in all of the nutrients she provides. "I never wanted children at all. Even when I was a girl, I wanted to be a nun, and when I lost that, I tried the next best thing. I didn't want to take him."

This stirs inside of Lana, some kind of unholy stew of pain and guilt and regret. "Then why did you do it? I told you you didn't have to—I told you I was putting him up for adoption—"

Mary Eunice caresses her cheek. "You wouldn't have been happy like that. You never would have stopped wondering where he was, what had happened to him, if he had gotten adopted or if he was just in foster care." Lana chokes at the thought, tears stinging her eyes. "You never would have stopped worrying about him finding out who he is and where he came from. If I took him—you said it yourself. I had the best chance of keeping everything from him, because I know the real story." She brushes the pad of her thumb over Lana's eyelids, kissing the single fallen tear from her cheek. "I took him because I loved you, Lana. Because I couldn't dream of a world where I didn't make your life as easy and painless as I possibly could. And you gave me my wonderful son, and I love him more than I ever loved God, and I won't regret any choice I made for as long as I live."

Lana's inconsolable tears fall from her cheeks, and Mary Eunice holds her so close, she only tastes the smell of her girlfriend's perfume and the heat of her naked skin. Mary Eunice teases her body with hands trailing over her breasts and slipping between her legs, not seeking sex but rather distracting her. "I never would have asked if I had known—" Mary Eunice kisses her. All of her love pushes deep into her mouth, fervent and honest. Lana shivers. What if she hadn't given Johnny to Mary Eunice? Where would they be now? Would they still be together? Tears slip from her eyes. Her legs tangle with her girlfriend's, and she bows her head in a melancholy resignation, bare arms locking around Mary Eunice's neck. "I've been with you longer than I was with Wendy," she whispers.

"Oh, Lana, I'm so sorry." Their bare breasts brush. "I love you so much."

"I love you, too." She buries her sorrows into the stomach of her beloved, sharing orgasm after orgasm, until they both doze into exhaustion.

…

"Hey, Mom?" Johnny asks. They're in their apartment, cleaning up the last of everything. Johnny has an apartment in August with Sam now; he's moving there permanently at the end of the summer. "We have things in the attic, right? It's been years, but I swore I saw you up there once. I can get anything down so you don't have to climb the ladder." He tugs on the string on the hatch door leading up into the attic so the door swings down. He catches the ladder and unfolds it all the way to the floor.

Mary Eunice spies him from where she's sorting through her collection of things from his childhood, all of the assignments she had saved—the first story he wrote, a drawing he had made in art class in the first grade labelled "me and mi mom," all of his report cards which professed him a straight A student even after the subjects were lost on her and her lackluster academic record. "Be careful, Johnny!" she calls without second thought. She has her nose buried in an essay he wrote when he was eleven about the Outsiders, fighting her way through every word with narrowed eyes.

Johnny climbs up into the dusty attic and reaches to tug on the light bulb, which clicks to life and casts the dark place in a dim, yellow light. A few boxes lay scattered around, lids tucked on securely, and a few plastic bags hold old clothes and toys. He tosses down the soft things first, knowing they won't break, and then he approaches the first of the boxes, lifting the lid to peek in at the sorts of things inside. Toy soldiers, horse figurines, collectibles, all things wrapped in newspaper meet his eyes; he unfolds a particular ceramic piggy bank, hand-painted. He grins at it in its many colors. He remembers when his mom splurged to buy them two of these piggy banks, blank with accompanying brushes and paints, and they spent the day each painting a piggy bank for the other. Flipping it over to look at the cork on the bottom, he reads where she wrote in black paint, "Love, Mom." She still has the one he painted for her in her bedroom—he's seen it when using the bathroom at Aunt Lana's house on her nightstand.

Wrapping the piggy bank back up in its newspaper, he hoists the box onto his shoulder and scales down the ladder, placing it beside the bags of toys. Then he climbs back up into the attic and, curious, peeks into another box to find more collectibles and things from his childhood. In the third box, he finds the same. Only when approaching the fourth box, labelled "Johnny" on the side, does he get a foreboding feeling, like his mother wouldn't really want him to look in this box. Oh, don't be silly, he thinks to himself. It has my name on it. He lifts the lid of the box.

Where the rest of the boxes had newspaper to protect the contents, this one doesn't. It's a large stack of documents with faded text. "Old taxes," he mutters, putting them aside and digging deeper into the box. Dragging it into the light, he shuffles through the papers to find a series of pictures snapped on an old Polaroid. The first is a baby—he assumes himself, because the back reads "Johnny McKee, born August 19, 1965" in his mother's elegant script. The next few pictures are the same, him, naked in some pictures, diapered in others, wrapped in blue blankets. One image only holds a hand blurring the lens, the background apparently hospital bed. A distorted face makes up the top corner, dark hair framing the woman's face. Johnny frowns. But Mom is blonde… Another picture shows him, smothered in blue blankets, held to a woman's chest, but the arms are tanner with fatter, more frequent freckles than his mother's.

Under the photographs, he finds more documents, all bearing his mother's familiar signature, though faded by the years of resting in this dark attic. "This document recognizes a formal recognition of legal guardianship for Mary Eunice McKee over the infant Johnny McKee on this day, August 22, 1965, until he comes of age," he reads aloud. "What the hell?" I'm not adopted! Mom told me all about my dad! Aunt Lana, too! He realizes Aunt Lana has never actually told him anything about his father—she never met him—but she's told him plenty of stories about when his mother was expecting him, and that's practically the same thing. A few more documents, as he flips through them, mark her as his legal guardian, adopted as a ward of the state, taken into her care.

At the very bottom of the box, a document stained yellow with age rests. The bold print at the top of the page reads, "Record of Live Birth. Commonwealth of Massachusetts." Johnny lifts it up to the light to make out the faded print. "Johnny McKee, born August 19, 1965, 7:17 AM. Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, 02114. White, male, firstborn." None of this is news to him. But beneath it, under the title of mother, where his mother's name and information should be, he finds nothing of hers. His stomach sickens. "Lana Winters, born October 16, 1932. White female born in Georgia. Resides at 303 Ninut Lane."

Johnny rips his gaze from the birth certificate to the pictures again, first gazing at the arms holding him. Those arms, does he know those arms? Are those Lana's arms, still young and brown? He has never paid enough attention to her physique. But the other picture, with the hand in the lens, the distorted face in the corner, framed by dark hair. Brunette hair. Like mine. Johnny seizes the box and slams the lid on it, dropping it and scrambling down the ladder in a sprint for the bathroom. He collapses over the ceramic bowl and vomits. "Johnny?" The sound of his retching draws his mother's attention—she is still his mother, he doesn't have sufficient reason to doubt her yet—and she follows him into the bathroom. "Johnny! My word, are you okay?"

Her cool hands caress his face. His skin has heated up all over, and as she washes his face with a cold washcloth, he croaks, "Mom?" and hugs her tight. She's softer now than she has been ever before in her life, plump from the leisurely days spent at Lana's house. Lana. The thought of her name makes his stomach flip, and he gulps to keep from vomiting again as his mom strokes his long, dark hair. I don't look anything like her. He gazes up at Mary Eunice. Her blonde hair, her blue eyes, her fair porcelain skin with a faint dusting of freckles like someone spilled a salt shaker—none of those things match his body, his dark hair, his dark eyes, the fat freckles which cover him from head to toe just like the freckles on the arms of that woman in the picture, the woman who had given birth to him.

He pushes back from the hug. "What's the matter?" she asks. He scans her with his eyes in disbelief. "Johnny? Do you need to sit down?"

"I'm adopted."

Mary Eunice blinks as he blurts the words. No, no, no… Her heart flounders in her chest like a fish. He's nineteen. She's made it this far. She's raised him. He can't learn everything now! "You're not adopted, honey. Where would you get an idea like that?"

The nervous, hysterical pitch to her voice indicates her own disbelief. "Don't lie to me." Johnny withdraws, folding into himself. She reaches for him, but he retreats and shrugs her hands off of himself. "Mom, don't—don't lie to me, please, just tell me the truth—" He shivers with unshed tears, shoulders quaking, voice thick. "Don't tell me any more lies."

She gazes back at him. Her heart breaks. Lana, I'm so sorry. She swallows hard, closing her eyes, hoping for everything to disappear. Maybe she will wake up and he'll be five again, ready to play at the park after a long day at work. Maybe she'll blink and he'll be the toddler slipping in Lana's high heeled shoes. Maybe she'll turn around and hold a tiny baby again. Anything, anything, would hurt less than this. "What did you find?" she asks, not because she wants to hide things from him, but became she needs to know where to begin.

"Pictures—someone, not you, holding me, in a hospital bed—documents formalizing my adoption—" He cuts himself off, choking on his words. "Your name isn't on my birth certificate. Aunt Lana's is." She blinks, long and slow, at him. I could've told him he was adopted. I could've told him he wasn't mine. I can't tell him he's hers. She reaches for him again, hoping he will let her touch him, praying he will let her show him her love. You are mine, she wants to say. You have always been my son. But he pulls away. He hesitates, tears and snot streaking his face, before he whirls and around pushes past her. "I can't believe this." Johnny doesn't shout—he has never raised his voice at her, never learned such a coping mechanism, but the brokenness inside of him makes her wish he had screamed at her until her eardrums exploded. "I can't believe—you—" He doesn't stop in the hallway, making a beeline for the door.

Mary Eunice jogs to catch up with him. "Johnny! Johnny! Wait!" She catches him by the elbow. He tries to shake her off, but he won't use any strength, and she clings tight like a child to a favored teddy bear. "Wait!" she pleads. He's as tall as she is, now, slight from his athletics but wiry. He still allows her to drag him away from the door. "Where are you going? Why—" She blinks back tears. Don't cry, don't cry, you can't cry right now. "Johnny, please…"

He glares down at her, but he doesn't glare like Lana; he shares her eyes, the things she loves most about her girlfriend and her son, but he doesn't know how to give them the vitriol Lana can squeeze into a single gaze. "I need to talk to her! I need to know where I came from—I need to know who my father is—Why did she give me away? Why did she give me to you? Where is my dad?"

Oh, Johnny. Mary Eunice places both hands on his forearm, squeezing it. "Johnny," she whispers, slow and soft, hoping the sound of his name will help him realize the answers to the questions he has. Her eyes refuse to hold the tears any longer. They slide free without her consent. "Lana has known she was a lesbian since she was ten years old." His eyes don't hold the recognition she seeks, however horrible and volatile. Is it too late now? Is it too late to invent a man? Someone Lana loved, who left her? Mary Eunice has told too many lies to try to build another one now. "You already know who your father is." Her voice is a bare whisper, shaking. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand. "You read about him."

His dark eyes, almost coal, glitter like gems in his face. She reaches up to wipe away his tears as they fall, cupping his handsome, tan face in both hands. "No," he says, a gruff denial. "That baby died, it was born dead, she told me so herself, I asked her, she said I could ask her and I did—" His words choke him. He seizes into a shudder. "I'm not, I can't be—"

"Sweetheart…" He wrenches away from her. "She lied. She lied to protect you, so no one would ever suspect what you are! She wanted you to have the best chance at a normal life, she knew people were watching her and knew you would never escape that shadow—" Mary Eunice stops reaching for him when he rips away again, tucking her arms around herself to keep herself from trying to hug him on reflex. He has never not wanted her to hug him before. "Johnny, I'm sorry."

"Were you ever going to tell me? Were you just going to let me live like this? Not knowing who I am?"

She closes her eyes. "I know who you are, Johnny," she whispers. She wants to hold him. Part of her wishes a thunderstorm would rise up, would shake the apartment, so they could hide under the blankets and cuddle again like they did when he was small and so afraid of the thunder and lightning. "You're smart, and you're gentle—you're funny—" Her breath hitches. "You're kind, you're loving, you're—you have so much compassion, so much generosity, you're so soft, you give such good hugs, you tell me wonderful stories, you're never too busy to talk about my boring day—" She wants to continue listing his wonderful traits, but her ragged sobs rip from her chest, and she only manages to gasp a twisted, "You're my son," before she hides her face in her hands.

He doesn't hug her. His voice is as broken as she feels on the inside. "No. I'm not."

She hears his feet on the floor, headed for the door again, and she lunges, grabbing him. God, please, please, make him understand… "Johnny," she begs, "please don't go to her, you'll only scare her, you'll only hurt her. She never meant for you to know, please don't go to her, please—"

He shakes her off. She stumbles, dizzied by her own desperation, and catches herself on the wall. "You don't get to tell me what to do!" he snaps. "You're not my mother."

The apartment door slams shut behind him. "No, no, Johnny…" Mary Eunice crumples in the floor, landing on her knees. Her whole stomach and chest aches like from a heart attack, the worst pain she has ever felt, utter agony, and she twists a few times in the carpet, wondering if something is wrong inside of her, if the stress of losing him has ruptured her stomach or broken her heart. "Oh, Johnny." I need to get up. I need to call Lana. She can't bring herself to get up. Her stomach flips, sick, but it reminds her of how Johnny's anxiety makes him sick, too, how he got it from her, and she has to gulp to keep from vomiting right there in the floor. I need to warn Lana. She's going to be so upset. Hugging herself, she presses her face down, mashing it into the carpet. Her body aches and throbs.

She lies there in the floor, clutching herself, for an indefinite amount of time, until her tears have run dry and her head throbs enough for her to close her eyes, drifting off to a fitful sleep. Eventually, Lana will realize she hasn't come home and will come looking for her. Until then, she doesn't have the strength to move. And, like she expects, the sound of the door creaking open awakens her, though she doesn't move, afraid to greet her girlfriend and receive the blunt end of her tongue in return. A heavy body drops to its knees beside her. "Mom?"

Both eyes pop open. "Johnny?" Her voice cracks. "You came back…" She tries to sit up, but her head spins from lying in the floor for so long. He catches her around the middle and tucks a pillow under her head, tugging up a blanket over her body. "Johnny, I'm so sorry." She blinks a few more tears from her eyes. "I never meant to hurt you, I never…" She shivers.

He puts an arm around her waist and pulls them close. "I'm sorry, Mom. I shouldn't have left like that." She gazes into his warm brown eyes, cast in late evening light filtering through the window. "I shouldn't have said any of that. I didn't mean it, I swear, I'm sorry."

She touches his face. It has a stubbly surface now, not soft like it was when he was a child. "I'm not upset, sweetheart." He smiles, weak and watery. "Nothing scares me more than the idea of losing you. You're all I've got, you and Lana…" She shakes her head, pain quivering inside of her. "Is she okay? Did she throw you out? Is she mad?"

"No, no, I—I didn't say anything. About that. I just…" He sighs. Mary Eunice studies the planes of his face. How many times did he run to Lana's house as a child? How many times did he seek shelter with her? Call her for the homework which rendered his mother stupid and helpless? "I sat in my car, looking in her window, thinking, trying to figure out what I wanted to say—because first I wanted to be mean, but I couldn't do that, and I know it always freaks her out if I go in crying, but I couldn't stop…" He wipes his eyes. "She came outside and asked me if I was going to cook in my car all afternoon or if I was going to come inside. I guess she'd been watching me for awhile from the window, because she already had the pizza ordered."

This makes Mary Eunice chuckle, sad and wry; she can't smell the garlic on his breath for her clogged nose, but she knows Lana always buys Johnny a pizza when he's sad, the way a grandmother might bake cookies and brew tea. "The kind you like? Pepperoni?"

Johnny nods. "Mhm. She asked me what I was upset about, and I told her we had a fight, and you were still here. She wanted to know if you were okay, and I said I thought so. And that was it, really—we ate, and she gave me something to read, and then I said I wanted to spend the night here with you, so she gave me these blankets. Our last night here, at home." Mary Eunice grins, but she doesn't stop wiping her nose. Johnny pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabs at her nostrils for her. "Do you remember when I was little, and Thomas told me if I blew my nose, all of my brains would fall out my nose, and I was afraid to blow my nose for years?"

Her sad chuckle blooms into a genuine laugh. "How could I forget? I had to chase you and pin you down to get that booger buster up your nose and suck all the snot out."

He lies down beside her, resting his head on the pillow, their faces inches apart; his breath wafts across her face. "Will you tell me everything now?" he asks. "Why did you take me? Why…" A shadow of confusion crosses his face. "Everything I know is a lie, and I've known you for nineteen years, and I don't know anything about you. Nothing that's true, anyway."

"Oh, Johnny." Has she deprived him of something by lying to him? Has she deprived him of her own truth? "It's a long story," she says, first, a warning. "I'll tell you if you want to hear, but I don't want you to be bored."

"I'm never bored, Mom. I love long stories. True stories."

With this in mind and in her heart, Mary Eunice tells him everything, the truth, as much as she knows it. "I didn't meet your Aunt Lana in high school," she says. "But everything else I told you about me, then, that was true. I didn't do well in school, and I dropped out when I was sixteen. I ran away from my aunt's house. I didn't—I didn't have any friends, though. I didn't go to work. I went to the abbey. I told them I was ready to serve, and I joined them."

"You were a nun?" She nods. "Like… A real nun? For real?"

A grin breaks her face. "What's so unbelievable about that? Nuns are people under the habit, you know. They're not just walking robots dressed in black snapping rulers and blabbering Bible verses."

He rolls over, gazing up at the ceiling, shaking with laughter. "I don't know, I just can't imagine you—I don't know, being mean to anyone, or being that excited about Jesus, or—maybe I just assumed lesbians and nuns were totally opposite creatures!" She swats him playfully on the chest, and he catches her hand and pushes it away. "What happened, then? Why did you leave?"

"After I took my preliminary vows—the vows of a novitiate, I was seventeen by then—the Mother Superior, Mother Claudia, heard of a need for more Sisters in the Briarcliff sanitarium. Owned and operated by the church. The turnover for volunteer Sisters was astronomical, so she sought out nuns who had taken solemn vows, who would have no choice but to stay or walk away from the abbey completely. So I went there, and I worked there for eleven years."

"That was where you met Aunt Lana?" he asks.

She nods. "She went there looking to meet with Kit after he was arrested, suspected of being Bloody Face, because Alma had gone missing. Everyone agreed, then, that he was the one killing all of those women, and all of the journalists wanted in on it. Lana was the smartest of them, though. She was the only one who got in."

"But she got caught."

"Yes. Sister Jude, the head nun, found her and imprisoned her. And it was cruel fate that Dr. Thredson—Bloody Face—he heard about Kit Walker's arrest, and he volunteered to serve as the court appointed psychiatrist, to make sure he was framed."

Johnny's delicate brown eyes sadden. "My father."

Mary Eunice nods again, biting her lower lip. "We were so understaffed at Briarcliff," she remembers, "it was—oh, it was four or five days before I did a patient count and realized she was missing. That night, the police returned her to us, after the car accident. Sister Jude didn't listen to anything she said—Kit was the only one who knew anything, and no one would believe him. They wound up taking things into their own hands. They tied him up and tortured him until he confessed, and they recorded it, so when Mother Claudia came to visit, she freed Lana and let her take the confession to the police."

"But she killed him."

"Yes. She killed him."

"What happened to you?"

Mary Eunice blinks. She had forgotten she was telling Johnny about herself, but his reminder brings her back to earth. "When it surfaced, that Sister Jude had made us ignore the pleas of a woman who was telling the truth—that we were holding an innocent man as a criminal and had a murderer cozying up in the staff room with us—that the Monsignor was overlooking the inhumane treatments inside Briarcliff to avoid scrutiny so he would have a better chance at becoming Cardinal… I left. Mother Claudia offered to reappoint me to a different facility, but… I don't know. I couldn't stand the thought of letting Lana go without an apology, at least. I loved her even then, I think, but I didn't know it, yet." She remembers how she burned, feeling naked, when she stripped off the habit she had sewn and returned it to Mother Claudia with an apology, shaking her head and saying, No more. Not from me. "I stayed a few nights in a homeless shelter before I found a telephone directory and walked to her house."

"And she just let you in? After all that?"

His incredulity doesn't surprise her. "No! No, not at all—She actually slammed the door in my face, the first time I knocked." She had felt the same incredulity, those years ago, when she stood there, staring at a blank door, wondering if she had made some kind of horrible mistake by ever leaving the church. Johnny squeezes her tighter around the waist at the harsh words. "But I think I caught her interest. She's a journalist, it's her job to be nosy, and—well, it's not every day a former nun shows up on your doorstep with no shoes or habit, hair all tangled, not having showered in the better part of a week." He snorts; it's not a real laugh, but it's light and frothy, a pleasant piece to take his mind off of the rest of the dark story. "I was just standing there, staring at her door, wondering if my whole life was a mistake—wondering if there was anything I could do to help her. She looked like death itself. You know, she's never been a good cook, and she was so thin and gray, her hair was falling out. Once, she told me she only let me in because I looked like somebody had dumped a malnourished, flea-eaten dog on her porch, so I guess the misery was mutual."

"But she came back. She did let you in."

"Yeah. She did. I was just—well, I had just decided to walk off of her porch, before she called the police on me for trespassing, and I walked out to the street and stuck my thumb out to catch a ride, and she came back to the door and she said, 'Don't be an idiot. Get your ass in here. What the hell is your problem?'" Mary Eunice snickers. Maybe she shouldn't find it funny, but she does, thinking of how Lana had confronted her and how she had received it. "I told her I just wanted to apologize, and I would do anything I could to help her. I think she thought I was bluffing, but she told me I could sleep on her couch until I had a place to stay. I got that job at the hospital, and I started taking care of her. Cooking for her. Keeping her house clean. She had horrible nightmares—she still does, now, but then, they were almost every night—so I started sleeping with her."

Johnny's eyelids are growing heavy, and he curls up on the pillows, gazing up at her but not contributing anything, his hands all caught in the blankets, tucked around his chin like a child folded tight into bed. "She had tried to use a coat hanger, at Briarcliff, to end her pregnancy, but it didn't work. And she found this back alley person—it was illegal, then—but she couldn't go through with it. Being like that, on her back, naked, it just…" Mary Eunice sighs. "I found her when I got off of work that night, holding onto her picture from Wendy and just crying. She felt so trapped. She thought nothing she could do would be the right thing—for her or for you.

"It took a week or two before she decided to start poking around adoption organizations. She didn't like any of them. They all had privacy contracts, but they kept records, and those were records she didn't want to risk you finding when you grew up. Once, she asked if I knew how to deliver a baby by myself—she thought maybe she could leave you on a church doorstep, and no one would ever have a chance of knowing where you came from. She was terrified."

"I always thought Aunt Lana was fearless," Johnny whispers.

Mary Eunice smooths a hand over his dark hair, tangling her fingers in it. "I've never seen her as scared as she was, then. Afraid something horrible would happen to you if she didn't put you in the right hands, afraid someone would track you back to her if she did." He looks at her with adoration, like a puppy worshiping its owner with its very gaze. She knows his eyes like she knows the back of her own hands, the precise flecks in their depths, the way the pupil expands in the dark and becomes indiscernible from the iris. "She finally gave up and went back to an adoption organization. She reviewed their policies again and asked about how they protect their records, and they told her that, if you grew up and decided you wanted to contact her, they would reach out to her and give her the option to decline. They told her that was the best she was going to get from any agency. So she came home that night, and she told me she'd decided to do it, even though it wasn't what she wanted."

"Did you ask to take me, then?"

She smiles. "No, sweetheart. I didn't ask at all. She asked me, the next day." She rubs his cheek, studying his face. This might be the last time we ever do this. This might be the last time we ever sleep together. It hurts to think. Her little boy has grown up. "She said she'd thought about it, and she would feel better if she knew where you were. She felt better leaving you with someone she knew would take care of you, someone who would never try to track down where you came from or tell you about being adopted. She asked me if I would adopt you and raise you as my own. And—well, you love Sam. You know it makes you a little silly."

"Love has never made me adopt Sam's baby." Johnny arches an eyebrow at her, a smile hidden in the crinkles around his eyes.

Mary Eunice laughs. "Well, if he ever asks, you'll know how I felt." The cold air permeates the heavy blanket, and she draws nearer to him. Her nose has begun to clear, and she can smell his cologne now; he wears the brand she bought for his last birthday. "I just smiled and told her you were mine if she would give you to me. That was when she kissed me for the first time."

"You're whipped," Johnny accuses, but he laughs as he says it, hugging her tight. "You got me because you're whipped! That's it!" He tickles her, and she shrieks with laughter, reaching to tickle him in return. "Whipped! Whipped!" She swats his hands away and pins him down, poking at his belly through his thin shirt.

In her mind, a thousand things flash before her eyes, a million ways they've done this. She sits on this floor with a tiny newborn blowing bubbles, changing his diaper; she blows raspberries on the belly of a laughing toddler whose legs flounder while he shrieks, "Don't stop, Mommy, don't stop!"; she wrestles with a growing boy, letting him pin her down and announce, "Ha, Mom, I beat you!"; she sprawls out beside a pre-teen on the rug to help him with his homework, acting as a cheerleader when she has reached the end of her education's usefulness; she sits on this floor and listens to him with rapt attention give his final speech for English class, trying to suss out the definitions of unfamiliar words without interrupting him. As she writhes now, escaping his playful hands, tears rise to her eyes—not tears of sorrow, but tears of joy, tears of wonder at the marvelous person she created.

He stills in the blanket, both of them tangled up together and wheezing with laughter. "I love you, Mom."

"I love you, too, Johnny. More than anything else in the whole world." He curls up like a little boy again, resting his cheek on her chest. "Don't you ever doubt it. You're my son. I was there when you took your first breath. I changed your first diaper. I gave you your first bottle, I saw your first smile, I hear your first word." His breath hitches, and he clutches her close, making a thin whimpering noise in his throat. "I knew you were mine from the moment I held you in my arms. I'll love you with my whole life, as long as I live. I promise you that." She kisses his forehead. A few more tears roll down his cheeks, but he smiles, and she wipes them away, waiting for the lull of sleep to carry them away.

"They were really good stories, Mom," he whispers when she thinks he has fallen asleep. "About my dad. You told me really good stories. Thank you."

A few days after he leaves, moving away to Augusta for what seems like forever, Mary Eunice breaks in Lana's arms. "I'm going to miss him so much!" she wails. "I shouldn't have let him leave!"

"Honey, he's nineteen years old." Lana fights to keep from laughing at her, holding her tight, kissing the top of her head and rocking her in spite of the amusement she finds in this distraught caricature of her lover. "You couldn't keep him from leaving." Mary Eunice sobs, completely inconsolable, into Lana's chest. "Mary Eunice… Is this just delayed empty nest syndrome? You weren't like this when he went to college."

"He was coming back from college, now he's never coming back, I'm never going to see him again—"

"Augusta is two and a half hours from here. We can go every weekend if you want."

"It's not the same! You don't get it, you don't have kids!"

"Thank god for that."

"Why do you think it's so funny? He left! He's gone!"

Lana wraps her up in the couch throw and brushes the tears from her cheeks with her fingers. "I don't think it's funny, sunshine, not at all." Mary Eunice pouts up at her with swollen lips like a toddler. "I'm so glad that you love him. Johnny is a good kid. He'll be back here visiting more often than you like to think." Lana kisses the tip of her nose. "Is this what the fight was about? That you didn't want him to leave? You two never fought before."

Mary Eunice shakes her head. "No… Well, kind of, I guess." I should tell her the truth. She doesn't. Johnny said he won't confront Lana, and she has no reason not to trust him at his word. Lana is happier this way. "I said something kind of dumb about not making a mistake with a first love, if he was still confused about Sam, and it hurt his feelings, and the more I tried to explain myself, the deeper of a hole I dug for myself. But… Yeah, I only said it because I didn't want him to leave, and I didn't want to admit it."

A kiss to her lips eases the hard lump of nerves in her belly. "Kids leave. That's natural."

"I know. But I miss him. I miss him so much." Mary Eunice frames Lana's face with her hands, the dark brown hair dangling around her. "I wish I could wave a magic wand and make him a little baby again. Just for a day or two. I want to take care of a baby again."

Lana chuckles, looming over her. "Maybe I should distract you, then." Her fingers trail up Mary Eunice's thigh, slipping under the fabric of her skirt, and within a few minutes, she forgets she even has a son.

…

Two years later, Johnny and Sam make a surprise visit to their house. Mary Eunice answers the door while Lana works in her office, writing another episode of her show, which has built an international audience for its empathetic political commentary. "Johnny! You're home!" She jumps at him and almost knocks him down. "I missed you so much! Lana! Johnny's home!"

He catches her and spins her around. "Yeah, Mom," he laughs, "it's not like you just saw me two weeks ago! Or talked on the phone to me last night, as a matter of fact." He hugs her tight and kisses her cheek, and she kisses his back before she falls back. "Hey, Aunt Lana." Lana goes for her obligatory hug, but Johnny doesn't linger in her arms or cling to her.

"Hey, kid. Hey, Sam." He waves at the two of them with a small smile, and they usher him inside. "I'll go order a pizza." It's Lana's automatic response by now to order a pizza whenever something unexpected or troubling happens, and no one argues with her. They all arrange themselves in the living room, spreading out on the furniture, television turned off, and share the happenings of the previous two weeks; even nightly phone calls, costing a fortune (though Lana never expresses irritation toward her girlfriend—she knows she doesn't understand, really, what it's like to be a parent, and she'll spend any amount of money to show her gratitude), can't keep them close enough.

"What brings you both to town?" Mary Eunice asks as Lana sits beside her.

Johnny shrugs. "Thomas and Julia are going through Uncle Kit's estate, finally. Sorting through things. They wanted to know if I wanted anything, so I thought I'd come to town. It's always nice to be home." Sam's hand rests on his knee until Johnny takes it in his own. They don't have to wear a mask around Mary Eunice and Lana; they can express themselves, can share themselves, and that's special for all of them. "We're thinking we might move back to the city next year, after we graduate," Johnny admits. "Or at least the suburbs around here. Somewhere closer. In the state."

"So the attachment disorder is mutual," Lana says, and Mary Eunice swats her on the leg with a pink blush spreading across her cheeks. "So, Sam, what's it like coming from a family that doesn't still want to drive you to school every day?" She winks teasingly at Mary Eunice.

"Oh." Sam stares down at his feet, shrugging. "I haven't been home in awhile. My parents are ready for me to bring home a girlfriend. My mom gave me my grandma's wedding band and everything. I'm still trying to figure out how to tell them my wife's name is Johnny."

Her eyes soften. "I'm sorry."

Johnny looks at her. "What did you do? For your parents?"

"My parents caught me in bed with Wendy when we were nineteen. We ran back to college and never looked back." The pizza comes to the door, and Lana gets up to fetch it, paying the driver with a generous tip before she brings it back to the living room for all of them. "Eat up, kids."

They all devour the pizza, Mary Eunice digging in without any thought, but as she bites into the loaded specialty pizza, Johnny asks her, "Mom? I thought you didn't like any toppings on your pizza?"

She peeks over the fat crust. "That's the only lie I've ever told you."

Lana's heart skips a beat, half-expecting him to question the joke Mary Eunice just told, but Johnny laughs. "Alright, then." He picks all of his toppings off except the pepperoni and sprinkles them on top of her piece of pizza, making her eyes glow with delight. "You can have 'em on my other piece, too. I don't like the gross crunchy stuff."

Sam chuckles. "The gross crunchy stuff? You mean the vegetables? No wonder you're so small. Won't even eat a pepper if it's on a pizza." He tells Mary Eunice, "Spaghetti is all he ever eats. Was he always like that?"

She shrugs. "Probably not, before I got too tired to ever do anything but boil pasta."

"Oh, Mom, you're too hard on yourself!" Johnny stops plucking the sausage off of his pizza and putting it on hers to reassure her. "You were practically a slave laborer at that hospital. Once you dozed off over the stove and I had to keep you from lightning your own hair on fire. Besides, I'm an athlete. We need carbs."

The night passes in peace and quiet for them, and the next day, Lana spends her hours on hold with her director on the phone while still writing the script for her next episode. Mary Eunice tells her she's running to the store, and she leaves the house in silence except for the scribbling of Lana's pen on the paper and her fingers on the typewriter, squinting at the fine print behind her reading glasses, which have a crack in the lens. She hasn't bothered to replace them because she likes the frames, which aren't in production anymore. Mary Eunice says it makes her old-fashioned. She doesn't mind.

A sharp pounding at the door startles her out of her skin. She starts up from the her desk with a gasp of surprise, whirling around to look out the window at the porch where Johnny rocks impatiently on her welcome mat, a round black package in his hand, what looks like a stereo in the other. Eyes narrow, she rips off her reading glasses and heads to the front door; she has never seen him so agitated before, hopping from one foot to the other, face flushed and shirt flapping in the wind. "Johnny?' she asks, answering the door. "What the hell are you doing here?" He barges past her into the house. Her heart skips a beat, and she sets her jaw. "Excuse me! What's going on?"

"Is Mom home?"

She hesitates. "She'll be here in a few minutes," she says. It may be a lie; she knows Mary Eunice tends to wander in the aisles of the grocery store, feeling freer now with her money than ever before, like she can buy a luxury item without the power going out or an eviction notion being left on her front door. But part of a hard no makes her worry Johnny has different intentions entirely; unlike Mary Eunice, she has never shaken the secret, tiny, deep fear of finding him one day with blood on his hands and a mask on his face. "Are you going to tell me what's going on?"

Johnny places the stereo on the coffee table. "This will tell you." He unwraps a tape and slams it down into the box—a tape recorder, she realizes, not a stereo, not a radio at all.

An old tape recorder, at that. "What?" she says, but her voice comes in a bare whisper. "Are you writing music now? Is it too vulgar for your mom to hear?" She crosses her arms, but her attempt to stand up tall leaves her spine feeling weak. Before it plays, she tries one more time to distract him. "You could afford a better device. That looks like it came out in the 1950's." His eyes are dark, and he doesn't look directly at her.

The tape whistles with crackling air before she hears her own voice. "You'd like to kill me right now, wouldn't you, Oliver?" She and Johnny both stiffen like electricity courses through them. "This might change your mind." Her previous self, the self from twenty years ago, unwraps the paper holding her fate in its print, the paper which tells her she's pregnant—which tells Oliver she's pregnant.

The sound of his voice makes her want to cover her ears. She resists the urge. "What's this?" Two words, only two words, but they echo. She knows she will hear them in her dreams for weeks, again. Goosebumps pop up all over her back.

"The ultimate cosmic joke. You got me pregnant." She folds the paper back up, paper crinkling, and then the fabric of her dress rustles as she tucks it into her pocket. Lana rocks onto heels. She wants to turn off the tape. She wants to kick the tape recorder across the room. She wants to throw Johnny out of her house. She does none of those things. For twenty years of lies, she can give him five minutes of her time.

Oliver puffs with something like happiness. He didn't have emotions. He never felt happiness. "I'm gonna be a father." None of the faux joy in his voice could ever touch the love which Mary Eunice feels for her son. None of it could parallel the enthusiasm with which she hugs him nor the tears she weeps when she studies his childhood pictures, even the ones where she squeezed an uncomfortable Lana and a grinning toddler into the same frame.

"No, Oliver, you're not going to be a father. Not this time."

He sounds like a child. "What do you mean?" Thirst and hunger had exhausted him when they attacked with their ambush. "Oh, no, no, no. Lana…" The sound of her name on his lips is volatile. It makes her want to change her name, just as it did twenty years ago, and the thought of hearing Mary Eunice call her by that same name makes her belly flip. It was easier when he called her Mommy—Mary Eunice would never call her that. "Please, please, please, don't give him away! I know what it's like to be raised in the system! It ruins—"

"Oliver, stop." A faint tinkering of metal clicks together, a wire coat hanger, a rusty thing she found in one of the old closets and unspooled. As the recording plays, she knows her former self has already penetrated herself with the vile instrument and failed to kill the stubborn bastard inside of her womb, though her former self doesn't yet know of her own failure. She's high on the sense of success. The monster is tied and bound, the abomination he left inside of her is gone, and she has one mission—to preserve Kit Walker's innocence. "This monster you planted inside of me?" Johnny recoils at the word monster. Tears roll down his cheeks. Lana's eyes remain dry. She won't give that monster—not Johnny, but the real monster, the monster in the tape—the satisfaction of making her weep again from the grave. "I'm getting rid of it. And since I'm stuck in here, I'm gonna have to get creative."

Fabric hits the ground, her panties; she's stripping down in front of him without a care. He's already seen her body, after all, against her will, and this time, she allows it to save Kit. "No, no, Lana, no, please…" His voice cracks.

The pleas of the bound murderer have no effect on her. "This is a mercy killing, Oliver. No baby should have to grow up knowing Daddy is Bloody Face."

"No! No, he doesn't have to know." He assumes the baby is male; Lana knows, if she had carried a female infant, and if Bloody Face had lived to see his progeny, he would not have valued a daughter. He would have treated her the same way he treated all women in his life. Perhaps he would have killed her, even. "Kit Walker is going to take the fall for all of those crimes. I promise you, it'll all work out!"

Her former self cannot stifle the incredulity, and she cannot stifle it, now. "Is that how you see it?" In another universe, the cards fall just as he intends them, and she gives birth to a healthy baby boy, and the courts rule she must share custody of her son with the man no one believes raped her—she knows such things have happened, still happen today, and she has no doubt the streak of bad luck she faced while in Briarcliff would stretch onward.

He keeps saying her name, and each time, the hair on the back of her neck stands up a little taller. "Lana, you know me!" Yes, she knows him. She knows him in a way no other living person knows him; she knows him in the way Wendy's cold corpse also knew him. "I can change! I have great determination! And now I have reason!"

She scoffs. "Really? You gonna be a real stand-up guy, now?"

He sounds so convincing. Lana looks at Johnny's face, trying to gauge if he trusts the word of his long-dead father or not, but Johnny has hidden all of his emotions in a dark shadow, sucking his lower lip, tears still falling down his flushed face. She shuffles a little nearer to him, hoping to read his eyes. The stench of vomit clings to him. Like his mother, he vomits when he's nervous or upset; the smell only tells her the discovery flummoxed him enough to send his face into a toilet bowl. "Yes! You owe me this!" I don't owe you anything! she wants to say. I don't owe you jack shit! She didn't say those things, at the time, because she had a purpose—she needed the confession to save Kit. Now, though, they race through her mind, and she bites her tongue to keep from speaking them aloud. "It's my child, too, please!"

"You're a sociopath. You can't be honest with anybody."

"I can, I can be honest, I can, please, help me!"

"Okay. Donna Burton." The man makes a pained groan at the sound of the victim's name. "Why did you choose her?"

"I saw her at the library a couple nights."

"What did you like about her?"

"Her skin. It was fuzzy like a peach, and I wanted to feel it."

Johnny hiccups and places a hand over his mouth, another gagging sound building in his throat, but he doesn't make a beeline for the bathroom or the kitchen; he trusts himself to hold his stomach, or to have emptied it enough not to make a mess in her living room. "So you skinned her alive?"

"Yes."

"And Alison Reidel?"

"She was a secretary at my dentist's office. I always liked her." Lana scowls at the sound of his voice, the recounting of his crimes, so free of guilt and remorse. He tells the truth because he knows it benefits him, but even that cannot give him emotions. "I put her to sleep first, but she kept talking to me. I was so confused."

A thin, pained keening, a sound of pure agony, rips from Johnny's throat. Both hands muffle his mouth now, but they can't hold in the grieving cry, sorrow and anguish. "What about Wendy?" the tape recorder asks. Lana steps forward and turns it off. "I get the point," she says. She knows how the conversation ends. She needs no more reminders or doubts about Wendy to follow her now. Studying him, part of her heart breaks, some part buried deep inside, or perhaps an old wound ripping open anew with salt pouring into it. "Why do you care?"

That tape didn't give him an epiphany. He didn't seek it out for no reason. He knew. Johnny shudders like the temperature in the room has dropped, though she feels no colder except for the ice spreading in her heart. "You were talking about me." She lifts her chin in arrogance. She won't apologize. Maybe I should. Maybe I should apologize. "You were talking about me, and you didn't even know me—you were using me to get to him—"

"When did you find out? Did your mother tell you? Or does she even know you know?"

He crumples into the floor, folding himself up into a tiny ball of distress. If Mary Eunice saw him now, she would hug him, but Lana cannot bring herself to lay a hand on him, not after hearing his father's voice again. She doesn't often see Bloody Face in Johnny—Johnny is all things gangly and long and lean, even as an adult, handsome in a narrow, willowy sense, with crooked teeth Mary Eunice never allowed her to purchase braces for and a nose which has leaned to the side ever since she saved him from the bullies before the tenth grade. Bloody Face had smooth, tan skin, with thick, luxurious black hair and eyes smoldering like coals, a body chiseled as if from marble, face sculpted by the gods and eyebrows like black marks from a sharpie. Johnny isn't crafted by any god; he's made of blood and soil and his mother's hard labor and Lana's own genes giving him the brown hue to his eyes and the spotty freckles all over his skin. "I found my birth certificate two years ago," he finally manages to mutter. "When I was moving out of Mom's house. That's what our fight was about. She begged me not to tell you, so I didn't because I didn't want to hurt her—" He chokes. "Why did you say that?"

Lana blinks, long and thoughtful. Mary Eunice's betrayal stings, though she wonders if it counts as a betrayal at all; she knows Mary Eunice did it to protect her, and that if Johnny hadn't found this tape, it probably would've worked. "Because I needed him to talk. We were recording him to clear Kit's name. He wouldn't have said anything incriminating if I hadn't given him some bait."

"Bait?" Johnny repeats in an incredulous voice. "Bait? Bait is a worm on a hook, or a dummy, not a—not a human being, not a baby—"

"Oliver Thredson was no catfish." Lana almost says your father, but she restrains herself. Bloody Face may have given Johnny half of his genes, but he has no bearing on his life. Johnny McKee has no father. He has a single, loving mother who has doted on him since the day he was born. Lana will not disrespect her to put them on the same terms. "I already thought I had successfully terminated my pregnancy. I thought we were free from him, once we got that tape. I wouldn't know until after the Mother Superior freed me that you were tougher than a coat hanger."

He coughs into his hands, muffling his mouth, hiding the lower half of his face, his eyebrows knitted together with a permanent wrinkle between his eyes. "Is that supposed to be some consolation? That you thought you had already killed me, and you were just trying to trick him with some story about me?"

She shakes her head, crossing her arms. Where he sits in the floor, he looks so small, so puny, so much like his mother, all hunched over and hugging himself for the pain. "It isn't consolation. It's the truth." She clears her throat. Each word hurts him, and in turn will hurt Mary Eunice when she comes home from the grocery store—Lana expects her bad luck to continue spinning so her girlfriend will enter at any time to see her weeping, distraught son in the living room floor, inconsolable, with his godmother doing nothing to ease his pain. "I know your mother raised you to believe your whole existence has been nothing but rainbows and sunshine, mostly because that's what any child deserves and partly because I asked her to. But that's not the truth."

"You hated me! By sheer virtue of what I was—" Johnny sobs. "I was just a baby," he whispers, "not even that, yet."

A tear still hasn't risen to her eyes. "Your grandfather died fighting Nazis," she says instead. "Your mother has never protested the bombing of Dresden—the bombs in Japan, either, for that matter. She hates them for the dumb luck of being allied with the people who murdered her father. The civilians, too, they were there. They were just collateral damage. Do you blame her for never shedding a tear?" Hate is a strong word to apply to Mary Eunice, but it holds firm, nonetheless; she refuses to discuss the second world war, buries her head in the sand at the mere mention of it, weeps on every anniversary of Pearl Harbor and celebrates every Memorial Day. "The war robbed her of her parents. Thredson robbed me." She doesn't say the things she lost to him, because she isn't sure she can list them all—she lost Wendy, but she also lost her peace of mind and a full night's sleep and an ability to walk outside without looking over her shoulder. "You were a civilian. You were collateral damage. And I know it doesn't feel very good to know that, but it's the truth."

Johnny weeps. He says nothing more to her. Eventually, she walks away, into the kitchen, and gets him a bottle of water and a cold wet washcloth to clean up his crumpled, red face; he has indicated no intention of ceasing this tirade of grief, but she wants it to end by the time Mary Eunice comes home, giving her less and less time with each passing second. "Wipe your face," she says in a low, soft voice. "Your mother will be home soon. You don't want her to see you like this."

To her surprise, he murmurs his thanks. He blows his nose and wipes his face, still shivering like a leaf in the breeze on her floor beside the coffee table, where the tape recorder rests. He rests his cheek on the cool wood of the coffee table. "Did he really love me?" he asks in a croak. "Did he really want me?"

"I'm sure he wanted you," Lana says, because she's quite on a roll of telling the truth right now, "but he wasn't capable of loving anyone. He liked to feel in control. No one has such complete control over another person as a parent over a child. A father over a son." She speaks with ease because of the many nights she has spent in her life, playing over the conversations she had with the man who tormented her. She has broken him down to a science in her head. It doesn't banish him from her nightmares.

Johnny stares down at the shag carpet, digging his fingers and toes into it and releasing them, a nervous tic. "It would have given him control over you," he says in a whisper. "I would have. If things had worked the way he wanted."

"Yes. It would have." She opens up the top of the tape recorder. "How much did you pay for this?"

"Thomas had the whole thing in a batch going to a crime museum in Los Angeles. I gave him forty bucks for it."

"You just had forty bucks laying around to buy an obsolete tape recorder and a tape?"

He shrugs. "Not right now, no, but I will in a few weeks." He wipes his nose. "I got a few interviews with Roberto Canessa. That guy who ate people in the Andes Mountains when the plane crashed in the seventies. The publisher is printing my book and working on marketing now in Augusta. I just—I was waiting until I had a material book before I told Mom. I wanted to surprise her. Please don't say anything."

"I won't." Lana sits back on the couch, grinding her jaw, teeth shifting over one another like grain through a silo. She crosses her legs and stares down at him in front of the television, like he blocks the screen from her view.

Lifting his gaze from his lap, Johnny meets her eyes. "Did you think I would be like him?" he asks in a bare whisper. "Did you think… I would want to hurt people? Like him?"

"I was afraid of that," Lana says. "I was afraid of a lot of things." She had counted all of the possibilities and listed them in a notebook on a piece of paper, not titled but otherwise complete, all of the things that could happen to her baby. She remembers going down the list with Mary Eunice and reviewing each of the options, letting Mary Eunice give her the best possible scenario and dispel her fears. "I was afraid I would give you up, and it wouldn't make a difference. Like he said." She nods to the tape recorder where it sits on the coffee table in front of her. "The system ruins lives."

"Why did you ask her to take me?"

"I loved her." Her foot bounces in the air, the only indication of her eagerness to end the conversation. "I was selfish, even if I didn't realize it. Some part of me knew she loved me enough to say yes, no matter her circumstances." She blinks from where she stares just above his head at the wall behind him and focuses on his face. "And I knew what it felt like to be loved by her. I knew how she made me feel, after living with me for six months. How she made me feel safe, and warm, and loved, when nothing else could touch my pain. I knew she would give that to you absolutely and wholeheartedly, and I knew you could be nothing short of pure if you grew up feeling that way. It was about her all along."

To her surprise, Johnny smiles. "She said the same thing about you. Why she said yes."

Lana inclines her eyebrows. This shocks her a little, but she doesn't betray it. "Do you hate me?" she asks him. "For what I said? Or for any moment after?"

"No." Johnny shakes his head. "No, I… I can't hate you." He averts his eyes, hidden behind his big glasses, the first pair of frames he purchased for himself instead of Lana buying for him. "I don't. You're right. Mom is—Mom is more than any kid deserves. I was never hungry. I always had a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in. Mom made my life wonderful."

"I can say the same thing about her." Johnny scrambles to get up out of the floor and heads to the kitchen. "Hungry?" she calls after him. He returns with her wooden broom with broken bristles, holding it by the sweeping head. "What the hell are you going to do with that?"

He wields the handle of the broom over the tape recorder on the coffee table. "I don't want anyone to make you or Mom listen to this tape ever again." She stands up from the couch to give him free range of motion, and as she steps out of the way, he snaps the broom handle down on the tape recorder. The top of it shatters. He beats the machine a few more times, and then he takes the tape from it and busts it open, stomping on it with his foot, ripping all of the spooled tape out of it and tearing it to pieces.

Gazing at the cathartic release, she asks, "How often do you destroy your own forty dollars?" in a wry voice, but it doesn't disguise the gratitude on her face as she blinks to him out of the corner of her eye. Johnny gathers up the mess and takes it to the trashcan in the kitchen, dumping it all into the garbage. "Thank you," she says when he returns to the living room.

He is only an inch or two taller than her. He doesn't look like his father. She thanks the small mercies in heaven; she has known more of these mercies since Mary Eunice came into her life. "Do you hate me?" he asks, countering the question she asked him minutes ago.

"No." She studies him, the baby to whom she gave birth but whose mother she has never been. For the first time in their lives, she says to him, "I love you. Not the way your mother does. But I do. And I'm proud of you."

He has a soft expression, and as he holds her gaze, she wonders how he and Mary Eunice share no blood if they bear so much resemblance to one another. "I love you, too, Aunt Lana." He glances past her, out the window, to Mary Eunice's car pulling up into the driveway. "Can I hug you?" he asks.

Reaching down, she takes his hand instead. "I'd prefer if you didn't, right now."

He squeezes her hand. He understands.

…

"Lana!" Mary Eunice's cry shakes the house as she barrels through, running much faster than she intends to run. "Lana, Lana, Lana, it's here! The book! His book is here! Lana!"

She rolls off of the couch with a groan, her back popping as she puts aside the book she's been reading and takes off her reading glasses to squint at her girlfriend, holding a small package in a cardboard box. "I see that. Is that a reason to shout?" She rubs her eyes with her fists, trying to get the grit out of them. Mary Eunice plops on the couch beside her and slices the box open, flaying the cardboard sides. "Oh, this is a big book." She picks up the hardcover novel.

Mary Eunice, though, hasn't glanced at the novel yet. She holds the accompanying letter in her hand, opening the envelope to take it out. "Oh, Lana, read it to me, please? It'll take me so much longer than it'll take you."

"Of course." Lana kisses her temple and folds an arm around her shoulder as she unfolds the letter, adjusting her glasses back on her face. "Dear Mom," she reads aloud, "I know I always deliver my books to you in person, but Little Brown made my first book signing in Los Angeles with this publication, and I knew you wanted to be the first to read it. Thank you for all of the interviews. I hope it can do you a shred of justice."

Mary Eunice is already crying, and Lana pauses to try to kiss away her tears, but she receives a swat in return. "Don't stop reading!"

Laughing, Lana bites her lip. "I'm going to be back in Boston in three weeks for a book signing, and after June, I'll be home for good. Or until my next book gets published, anyway. Sam is under instruction to take you and Aunt Lana out for Mother's Day, since I won't be around. You're my best friend in the world, and I'm glad I can finally tell your story. I love you more than you will ever know. And I know Aunt Lana is probably reading this out loud to you, so I love you, too. Stay gold, Johnny."

The sound she makes, something between grief and joy, a squeal, shakes Lana to her core. "I'm so happy, Lana," she bawls, and Lana begins to fold up the letter before she spies a little note on the bottom of the letter, and she straightens it out again to continue reading.

"It continues—he says, 'PS: I know Aunt Lana skips reading the dedications because they're useless and sappy and the readers don't want to know about the author's personal life, but make sure she reads this one.'" Mary Eunice fixes a glare on her, and she shrugs. "Hey, I think dedications are stupid. I didn't dedicate my book to anyone but me, myself, and I."

"Bullshit, Lana, I read your book. It's dedicated to Wendy—and I know, because I read the dedications."

"You read it? After I read it to you?" This is news to Lana. She can't imagine Mary Eunice struggling through a whole novel with her poor reading skills without growing frustrated.

"Yes." Mary Eunice lifts the hardcover novel Lana had discarded in favor of reading the letter and tugs it into their laps. The cover pictures the silhouette of a nun with a red rose between her fingertips, and in elegant print, the title reads, On Loving My Mother: The Ode to and Biography of Mary Eunice McKee. Under that, the cover has his name in bold print. "Read the back?" Mary Eunice pleads.

Lana flips it over. "The eighth novel by prolific nonfiction journalist Johnny McKee, On Loving My Mother follows the life of a young woman broken by World War II and her story of survival and overcoming hardship to inspire the lives of everyone around her. McKee reaches into his own soul and past and airs out the dirty laundry of many in his family in this gritty, raw, and honest dedication about his mother's life. With this book, he crosses borders of memoir and biography, creating something fresh and new for the nonfiction genre."

Mary Eunice rests her chin on Lana's shoulder. "You gave him permission to, um, air out the dirty laundry, right?"

She chuckles. "Yes. I did. Many times. It's his truth to tell, not mine." She opens the front cover of the book, which bears his signature, as if Mary Eunice would ever want her copy to have enough value to make it worth selling. Lana flips to the dedication, like the letter instructed. "To my mother, Mary Eunice McKee, for loving me from the moment I took my first breath without any question, qualm, or condition, when she absolutely didn't have to and when I absolutely didn't deserve it. And to my godmother, Lana Winters, for learning to love me where I never would have learned to love myself, for taking care of my mother, and for giving me permission to share the secrets she always hoped to keep."

"Oh, Johnny…" Mary Eunice touches the page, as if she can feel his presence through the paper and ink. "I'm so proud of him."

Lana nuzzles into the soft texture of her blonde hair. "I am, too."

"Can we start the first chapter now?"

"You bet." They kiss, and Lana flicks the pages to the first chapter. With Mary Eunice curling up at her side, pressed warm against her, she keeps an arm hooked around her girlfriend; Mary Eunice uses one hand to support the book, so Lana only has to worry about turning pages when she's ready while her lover closes her eyes, tilts her head back, and listens. Planting another, final kiss to her temple, Lana blinks back to the page, and then, she begins to read.