A/N: I'm back. Hopefully, we'll be getting into a more regular schedule. (Fingers crossed.)

Note #1: Thanks go to Rosestream yet again for her prompt and fab beta reading. You're the best!

Note #2: Thanks again go to all reviewers. You're a bright spot in a not-so-sunny world.

Disclaimer: Don't own.

Rating: T

Three

Two weeks after I sent the letter to Aunt Lise, in the last dregs of August, a reply was waiting for me in the mailbox. I opened it with trembling fingers, but I needn't have worried. I was welcome to stay in New York with them for as long as I needed. I could get a job, save a little money, and buy an apartment of my own, provided I contribute to the family expenses. I could raise my child on minimum wage, learn to just scrape by. This was as good a future as I could have hoped for. Once, I might've wanted more, but if there was one thing that summer had taught me, it was that perceptions were ever-changing, never stable. You had to take what you could get.

They also sent a plane ticket. In a week, I would leave for New York City.

I packed a bag, stuffed my clothes and books into a canvas duffel. I didn't have many belongings, nothing of vital importance. I was leaving behind the farm, and while some part of me was sorrowful and wistful, most of me were glad I would not be returning to life as usual in the autumn like I thought I would last June. My mother and sister were dead; I was pregnant. Life changed in the blink of an eye. The true mark of character was learning to change, adapting to new circumstances, new revelations.

My hair hung in choppy tendrils now, a bird's nest of a disaster. In a way, I relished it. Gone was the old Libre. Some part of me had felt filthy and violated after Ares, and cutting my hair, silly as it might have been, still loosened me, freed me from my binding shackles. I was a different girl now.

I started going by Libre again. Liberate yourself at last, my grandmother had said. Gone was Lili; she no longer existed. In her place was Libre, the aspiring cocktail waitress that got knocked up at sixteen. That was who I was now, like it or not. I was adapting.

Late in August, I got a letter from Lovett. Dearest Lili, it read. How is life back home?

I didn't know how to tell him. Telling Martel had been one thing. He was the outcast of the family, a homosexual imprisoned in the clutches of rural Ohio in 1972. My father was still refusing to look at me, and when Fitz addressed me, he either called me 'Whore' or 'Slut'. Unless Martel was around, there was no one to reprimand Fitz, and because the wall around my heart was not yet strong enough to do it myself, it slid by. I couldn't bear to tell Lovett the truth: that my life had completely fallen apart, so much so that it might never be put back together again, like Humpty Dumpty. I couldn't bear for my favorite brother to treat me like muck on the bottom of his shoe.

But then the letter got worse, and I realized dodging my way out of an ugly truth and wrapping myself in a beautiful lie might just not be possible.

I've been given leave to come back home – just for a month or two, but leave all the same. In light of the recent tragedies, I've asked to stay at the farm and work a little, just to help Papa. I'm afraid the harvest season will be especially taxing for him this year, and I'd like to help, or at least make arrangements for something or someone that can. I should arrive before the end of August. I can't wait to see you. You'll be a sight for sore eyes.

Your brother,

Lovett

I pressed my hand to my mouth and willed myself not to cry. Sooner or later, my secret would be out, and Lovett would know the truth: his sister was a pregnant whore.

###

Lovett arrived on August 28, just two days before I was set to leave for New York. I still hadn't told him that I wouldn't be sticking him around, but after he knew the honest truth, I doubted he would have any objections to my displacement.

I waited for Lovett on the front porch, in a loose-fitting cotton dress that sat still and stagnant around my ankles in the stifling August heat. He was a wavering form coming up the drive, his bag slung over his shoulder. He approached, dragging his feet through the dirt. It was funny, I thought. We had always worried about Lovett dying the most. It was ironic, really. The summer of deaths, and thus far, Lovett's wasn't among them.

"Hey," Lovett said, offering me a smile. His grin, however, quickly changed to alarm. "What – what happened to your hair?"

"I cut it off," I said.

"You cut it off? What, with a pair of plastic scissors?" I shrugged, and Lovett shook his head. "That's… interesting."

"How was Vietnam?" I asked, changing the subject artlessly.

Lovett's lips thinned. "Bloody," he answered shortly, and it was clear that he didn't want to talk about it.

I nodded, looking down at my dirt-encrusted fingernails. "I have to talk to you."

"Isn't that what we're doing right now?"

"No, I mean…" I trailed off, fumbling for the right words. "We need to talk. In-depth. I need to tell you something that sort of… happened while you were gone." I kept my gaze pinned on my feet. I had thrown on my work boots underneath my dress. They were crusted with mud, the dark sludge lightened by the sun.

"Why? What happened while I was gone?" He glanced up at the house. "Did something happen to Fitz or Martel? Or Papa?"

"No," I said quietly. "Something happened to me."

"I already saw your hair, Lili."

"Libre."

"What?" Lovett stared at me, eyebrows furrowed.

"Libre," I repeated softly. "I go by Libre now."

Lovett's duffel bag dropped to the ground with a thump. He groaned, rolled his shoulder, and plopped down on the porch beside me. He looked exhausted, wan and tired, strung out like a piece of bubblegum attached to the sole of a shoe stretched to the breaking point.

I found myself acutely aware of our surroundings; the quiet farm I would be leaving so soon. My grandmother, for once, was still inside, and Fitz, Martel, and my father were out in the fields. It was just the two of us, brother and sister, alone on the porch. My stomach swirled.

"Alright," Lovett said, rolling his eyes. "What do you have to tell me, Libre?"

"I met a guy over the summer."

Lovett blinked. "…Okay. I don't-"

"We broke up a little while back. At the beginning of August." I looked down at my feet. "Our relationship was…" I swallowed, fortifying the walls around my heart. "Our relationship was mainly about sex. I didn't love him, he didn't love me. I needed somebody, after Maman and Nicoline, and he was there."

Lovett looked angry now, and a bit green around the gills. "You mean some guy used you to his advantage?"

"Yes."

"And you ended things?"

"Yes."

Lovett was silent for a minute. "And that's what you had to tell me?"

"No." I closed my eyes. "I had to tell you…" I trailed off. My hands were shaking. This was worse, so much worse, than telling Martel had been. The car accident was magnified a thousand times. "I had to tell you that…" I closed my eyes. "I'm pregnant, Lovett."

He didn't say anything for a long time. I cracked open one eye to gauge his reaction, but his face was blank. He didn't say or do anything. We just sat there in silence, watching the horizon. Maybe my grandmother had the whole life thing figured out. Maybe permanent cloud-watching was the way to go, the way to live. The ideal occupation.

Lovett finally gave a gusty sigh and put his arm around my shoulders. "Oh, Lili," he said, lightly kissing the top of my head. "What are we going to do with you?"

We sat out there for a long time, watching the sky and talking. Lovett told me a little about Vietnam, and in exchange, I told him a little of my future. I told him a bit about Ares, leaving out the part about his strange eyes, and his whole Greek-god spiel. Instead, I told him about Ares's motorcycle, about the day that we'd gone to the Root Beer Stand. I told him about my plan to go to New York City, about the plane ticket Aunt Lise had sent me. He nodded, swiping a hand across his face.

"What?" I asked. "You don't… You think I should do something else?"

"No," he said. "I think Grandmother was right. I think you should go to New York." He looked down at his shoe. It was flecked with farm dust, a few stray strands of grass clinging to the rubber sole.

"So then why the face?" I was only half-joking. Now that my mother was gone and my father was a waif, Lovett's was the testimony that mattered most to me.

"Nothing."

"Lovett," I warned.

"It's nothing, Libre. Really." He had slipped so easily into calling me by my new name as if he realized how changing a name could separate you from your past self, form an endless ocean of regret and mistakes.

"Lovett, I can tell when you're lying. Just spit it out." I crossed my arms. The heat of the blistering day had dissipated, and the faint evening chill was seeping into my skin.

He let out a breath. "I'm just… sad. That's all."

"Sad?"

"I'd wanted more for you," he said frankly, looking at me. "We all did. I never thought you would stay here, not in Ohio. If I'd gotten the chance, I would've stayed on the farm, probably worked on the thing for my whole life. Inherited it from Maman and Papa, most likely. Martel and Fitz might've stayed on. But we always thought you were going to be the one to leave, even before Nicoline fled from the cornfields."

"Me?" I echoed. "But I never even – I never even thought of leaving."

"Yeah," he said, "but you also never even thought of staying."

We sat in a thick quiet. "I guess you're right," I admitted finally, pulling a clump of grass and turning it over deftly in my fingertips. "I am leaving, though."

"Sure," Lovett said. "But not the way I'd wanted you to."

We were silent after that. There was nothing left to say. Sometimes people have a simple way of telling the ugly truth, spelling out the honest, frank reality and letting it hover in the air, settling around your toes and sinking into your skin with the cool night air. What's the point of speaking after that?

###

The day before I left for New York, Fitz knocked on my bedroom door.

"Come in," I muttered, stuffing clothes into a suitcase with a frown tugging on my lips.

I didn't know who I expected. Lovett, or maybe Martel. Perhaps even my father. But Fitz had been treating me as if I were some infectious disease. He had stopped cursing at me, most likely because the first time he called me 'slut' in Lovett's presence, he socked Fitz in the jaw, grabbed him by his shirt, and slammed him back into the wall hard enough to make the picture frames rattle. I didn't think it was because he actually felt guilty.

"Oh, my God," I said, almost dropping the shirt I was pressing into my suitcase. "Fitz?"

There he was, dark-haired and dark-eyed, purple-blue bruises blooming along his jaw. "Can I…" He gestured toward the room.

"Yeah," I said, still eying him warily. "I did just say 'come in', didn't I?"

"Yeah," he said, scratching the back of his neck. He looked exquisitely uncomfortable.

"Fuck," I said. "Are you going to kill me? Are you hiding a knife in the waistband of your jeans, or something? A shotgun behind your back?"

"Am I hiding a-" Fitz got a funny look on his face. "Wouldn't I just end up stabbing myself in the gut if I hid a knife in the waistband of my jeans?"

"I don't know," I said, still cautious. "Maybe you'd cut off your dick instead. Depending on which way the sharp end was facing."

Fitz shook his head. "No, I'm not…" He exhaled, dragging a hand through his hair. "I just came to ask you – if – you know –"

"Oh, for Chrissakes, Fitz," I said, irritated now. "Whatever new insult you've come up with, just go ahead and sling it my way. Might as well."

"It's not a new slur. It's…" He swallowed. "Did you love him?"

"Did I – what?" I was taken aback, to say the least.

"Did you love him? The guy that, you know…" He gestured at me, his cheeks scarlet.

My lips folded together. "His name was Ares. And no, I didn't love him."

"Then why did you sleep with him?" The words came out brazen, blunt. That was Fitz for you. That was my brother.

I dropped the shirt, sinking onto my mattress. "You really want to know?"

"For God's sake, Libre, why the hell would I ask you if I didn't?"

"Fair enough." I paused. "He was my drug. Nicoline had acid, and pot, and cocaine, and God only knows what else. Maman had pills. Papa has his work in the fields, Lovett…" I trailed off. "Actually, I don't know how Lovett copes. But whatever it is, Ares was my drug. He was my way of escaping. I wasn't… all the way there for most of July when we were together. I don't think any of us were."

"I wasn't," Fitz said quietly.

"Case in point." I exhaled. "It might sound stupid – it is stupid – but I just wanted a way to forget. Just for a little while. My life wasn't worth living, you know? But I didn't want to throw it away entirely, either. Just in case. One day, it might be worth living after all."

Fitz nodded. He turned around as if to leave, but I stopped him. "Fitz, wait. Why did you come in and talk to me? After weeks of hurling crude names at me, why are you asking me this now?"

He halted but didn't turn. "Lovett," he answered. "He told me to ask you why. I couldn't understand why you would – how you would be so stupid. Lovett told me to ask you, and then see if I could understand."

"And do you now?"

"Do I what?"

"Understand."

A pause, so long and drawn out it seemed to stretch on forever, like molasses dripping from a jar, sticky and chestnut brown. "Yes," Fitz said softly, and left, the door swinging shut behind him. Just like Lovett's simple truth, there was nothing to say after Fitz's admission. Just silence to be chewed on and honesty to be embraced like a toddler hugging a teddy bear.

###

The night before I left for New York, I had a nightmare.

In it, I had gone into labor. Horrible, awful labor; piercing and terrible, like being kicked in the gut, but times ten. I was on a hospital bed, chewing down hard on the ice, the chips slippery on my tongue, blood snaking out of the side of my mouth when my teeth had chomped down on my fleshy lip instead.

But when the baby came out and I went to hold it, the child had no eyes. They were only gaping black pits, filled with flickering flames.

Lovett shook me awake. I had been screaming in my sleep.

###

My goodbyes were swift and quick. I kissed Martel on the cheek, whispered "I forgive you" into his ear, hugged Lovett tearfully, and smiled tentatively at Fitz, who, to my utmost relief, returned my shaky half-smile. My father just nodded at me. He didn't say a word. I wondered if he, too, like my grandmother on the porch, had lost his mind from grief. It was difficult sometimes to remember that I had not just lost a mother and a sister that July; my father had lost a wife and a daughter. No parent should ever have to bury their child.

I didn't know then that I would never return to that farm. If I had known, I might have grabbed a handful of the soil and put it in a Ziploc bag, a piece of home to carry with me always. But I didn't. I only know now how the whole thing was going to play out, and my death is still awaiting me, in my peripheral vision but not quite in my grasp just yet.

Back then, my stomach hadn't even swelled to its full size.

I was New York-bound.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Please review!