I love circling things back around to characters we've met before. This was never intended to be a four-part series, but being able to reintroduce characters/subplots from Tender is the Night has been SO satisfying for me. (Probably more satisfying for me than it will be for you.)

And y'all, I PROMISE, you won't hate Claire as much as you think you will. Just try to keep an open mind.

Why do we do it? Drown ourselves under our own waves. – "Pacific" by Roo Panes

Claire

A zoo is a zoo is a zoo. They all have some combination of the same animals, and little tiki huts with clever names like Safari Sandwiches and Big Cat Coffee Cart—and no matter what day or time of year you visit, two thirds of them will still be closed. There are bronze statues baking in the sun, little kids burning themselves when they climb on so their parents can get a picture. There are stationary binoculars covered in germs and activated by quarters. I bet some even take card now.

There are education stations where you try to fit yourself into the shape of a gorilla and compare your footprint to an elephant's. And there is a train, and a carousel, and botanical gardens, and families laughing, maybe a school field trip if you go earlier in the spring.

I sit inside San Diego Zoo's Benchley Plaza, and think about why I came here. It wasn't for the carousel, let me tell you.

I guess I'm trying to recover memories of our family vacation here. It had been my first time on a plane, and I couldn't decide whether to sit beside Mom or Quil. In the end, I was made to sit beside Quil, so that across the aisle, Callie could be sandwiched between my parents in the event of a tantrum or freak out or ear pain.

There are a few distinct things I remember from that vacation: the heat. It had been hot that summer, so hot that even the locals were talking about it. I didn't know much about climate change, but even at ten years old I knew that wasn't insignificant.

I remember this one place we ate at, some American restaurant where the kids' meals came in dog food bowls (as a kid, that's cool shit; as an adult, you probably appreciate the symbolism). I remember the walking. San Diego is not a walkable city, not in the way New York is. My parents tried to pick a central hotel, but we still ended up copping out by the end of the trip and hiring cabs for most things.

And I remember my mother's face, when she saw the Welcome to San Diego mural, painted in the Arrivals wing of the airport. Her excitement when she brought us here, not only to the city, or the zoo, but to this specific pavilion. She'd done research, and this was the best place to rest. Close to the bathrooms, a restaurant that served—reliably—chicken tenders, and a coffee hut ("Zoobrew"; ten points for creativity).

I thought, when I first got to this city, that this would be the place. I'd open the letter my mother wrote me, the one a teary Quil pressed into my hands the day before her funeral. The one I nearly forgot before seeing it while grabbing my passport.

If I had forgotten this letter, it would have ruined everything.

If that were possible. Most things feel firmly ruined already.

"Claire?"

My head twitches in the direction of my name before I remember no one knows me here. No one is asking for me. And it's not my mother, like my subconscious wants me to believe. It's just a name belonging to someone who isn't me. I return my eyes to what I can see of the gorilla exhibit.

"Claire," the person says again, closer, and I'll just glance over to make sure they're talking to someone else.

Except.

They're looking right at me.

"You're Claire, right?" the woman says, taking no prisoners and sliding into the seat across the table from me. "Claire Young?"

"No," I say quickly. San Diego is close to Mexico. If I came all the way here just to get human trafficked, my mother would kill me. The sharp sting of tears burns behind my eyes. "You're wrong."

The woman, maybe late twenties or early thirties, reaches up to adjust her bun. Tight black kinks of hair spill from the elastic. "My name is Sierra. I know your… Well, I'm not sure what they actually are to you. Seth and Katie Clearwater?"

Those names, familiar ones in such an unfamiliar place, sound odd. Like a foreign language. I left to be surrounded by different things and people and places, not more of the same ones that make my heart hurt.

"How did you find me?" I say, belatedly realizing I just inadvertently answered her question.

She smiles. "Do you want the long or the short version?"

I won't be susceptible to her question witchcraft anymore. I stay silent.

"The short answer is that your boyfriend knows you well," she says, and even though I drop my gaze to the plastic ridges of the weaved tabletop, I feel her eyes on me. "The long answer is that Quil heard an airport announcement with 'San Diego' in it, and Seth and Katie mentioned they knew some good people who live in San Diego. It's the first time she's ever called me, you know?"

"Katie?" I ask, meeting her gaze, although I'm not surprised. Katie hates phone calls the way I hate being told I'm wrong.

Sierra nods, studying me with nothing more than fascination in her eyes. Here's a woman who knows nothing about the life I ejected myself from. Unless someone told her over the phone what I'm walking through, she doesn't know I just lost my mother a week ago. She doesn't know why I feel like I'll never smile again or why just pulling a brush through my hair this morning brought tears to my eyes.

I'm just a person to this woman, and I missed it. I missed people looking at me, pity-free.

"You have a place to stay?" Sierra asks next, already standing again.

I stay rooted to the sticky plastic. "Yeah."

"Do you want one?" She pauses, like she just comprehended my answer. She amends her statement. "A free one, then, I guess."

"You're offering me to—what? Come stay with you?"

She nods. "Yes." She's dressed in dusty tennis shoes, khaki shorts and an old t-shirt, the sleeves cuffed up to her shoulders. She looks like she works here.

I bite my tongue, and then I can't. "Do you work here?"

"What?" She looks down, then chuckles. "No. But good one."

"You don't even know me," I say, circling back around to her original offer. And wow, pity-free looks are addictive when you haven't had one in a few months. I stand to my feet without realizing I'm doing it.

"I know Seth and Katie."

Sierra starts walking toward one of the many paths zigzagging through the pavilion, and I scramble to place Mom's letter safely inside my backpack. The moment's passed. This wasn't the place, anyway.

"Don't you only see them one weekend a year?" I call after her, my lungs protesting at moving so fast in the stifling heat. "How can you know them so well with so little exposure?"

She looks back at me, a smile overtaking her face. She's pretty in the way my mom was pretty, from one corner of her smile to the other. "When you meet good people, you just know."

We're almost to the front of the zoo, exit in sight, when Sierra stops. "You were done, right? With the zoo."

I want to look behind me, but my mother isn't here. If she was, I would have ripped the letter open already.

"Yeah, I'm done."

I'm riding in the passenger seat of an old Jeep Wrangler, doors and top nowhere to be found. My backpack is clutched to my chest, in fear of losing its contents to a too-sharp turn.

When Sierra had stopped by my hotel so I could check out, she'd given me a funny look when I returned with that same backpack, my only addition the surfboard tucked under my arm. I'd stopped short of buckling it into the backseat.

"Why do you only see Katie and Seth once a year?" I yell over the sound of the highway.

Sierra switches lanes, and I can't currently say whether this is preferrable to the taxi I took this morning. "We meet up with them in Yellowstone. It's just a thing." She shrugs, then flicks her blinker and exits at the last possible second. And Quil thought I was a bad driver… "It's hard to explain. But if you only see each other once a year, it gives you so much to catch up on. I'd rather Seth tell me about his life in person than see it through a screen."

It strikes me that she might not even know about their new baby. I don't say anything now, in case the surprise is part of 'The Thing.'

"You keep saying we."

"Oh!" Sierra says, turning left onto a sub street I miss the name of. The freeway buzzes above and behind us. "Reed. My partner. You'll meet him later. And Marnie."

"Your daughter?"

Sierra grins as she comes to a stop at a red light. "Sort of."

Through the rest of our ride to an unknown destination, Sierra points out things as we pass them: the dispensary she and Reed prefer, the street art painted along the numerous barrier walls, a parking lot where the "best Korean BBQ food truck in the world" parks on the weekends.

As the streets become more residential, she notes the house that operates an escort service on the weekends, the one right next door that operates as a church, definitely on purpose. The community center Reed's tía ("aunt," I had her translate) goes to for her book club every Monday is painted with bright colors. They're everywhere, the colors.

I never saw this part of San Diego when I came with my family.

Minutes later, Sierra pulls up to the curb in front of a house so obscured by shrubbery I can't see what color the stucco is.

"Welcome home," she says, hopping down out of the cab.

I unclench my hands from around my backpack and sling it over my shoulder. Eventually I'll have to get some more clothes. Maybe a set of pajamas. A decent phone charger. And note to self: if you're going to pack up and leave your life in the middle of the night, it might be a good idea to grab a bra. I've been wearing my bikini top since I got through airport security.

Tucking my board under my arm, I follow through the maze of the front walkway, dodging vibrant flowers and pointy cacti, hardy plants. It even smells dry here. The air singes my lungs with each inhale.

Sierra unlocks the turquoise door in front of me. "Ready?"

Ready? For what?

A yellow ball of fuzz and energy bounds out from behind the door.

"Marnie," I breathe, not even a question. The tag clinking around the golden retriever's neck clearly reads her name.

I drop to my knees, the board scraping against the concrete underfoot. Marnie licks at my face, placing her paws on my knees to really get in there.

"She'll do that all day if you let her," Sierra says, sliding the board from my clutches and stepping around us to head into the house.

We never had any pets growing up. Mom absolutely would not have raised it, and she knew Callie and I better than to believe us when we said we would. Bethany and Embry have a dog, and one of my friends from school has two cats. But I've never really connected with them like I am with this dog, right now.

Marnie pulls back, looking at me with joy and happiness. Just that I exist is enough for her. She doesn't care whether I've got it together so long as I scratch her behind the ears. How long has it been since I didn't feel that burden?

The burden to keep it together for my family, be the big sister Callie deserves, the diligent and careful daughter my father needed me to be while my mother was sick. To make good test scores and get into good schools and be good at everything. Even though I know I placed some of those burdens on myself, if the others in my life held me to them, wasn't that just as bad? It… compounded. Twice the weight of expectation.

So I let myself, just for this one simple minute, press my face into Marnie's soft fur and let her absorb some of my tears.

The Black rears up at my edges, and I let it. It's so hard to fight against this darkness. I'm starting to forget why I should fight it at all. What point is there, when she's gone?

"Claire," Sierra calls from inside the house. "Does cilantro taste like soap to you, or can we be friends? I was thinking we'd hit up that taco truck for dinner. Reed has a late class tonight, so we're on our own."

I'll cry on a dog—apparently—but I draw the line at blowing my nose on one. I push myself up on watery knees, and Marnie bounds inside, unfazed.

Sierra's standing in front of an open cabinet. I see snacks we don't have in Washington, those little Mexican sodas in glass bottles.

If she notices my just-been-sobbing face, she keeps it to herself. "Is that a no on the cilantro?" Her nose wrinkles. "It's a no, isn't it?"

I let out a garbled laugh, surprised to find I actually mean it. "Cilantro's good, when it's fresh."

Sierra smiles. "This is California. It's always fresh."

Reed and Sierra are a California version of Seth and Katie. They live simply, because the joy in their life comes from each other.

Reed is a math professor at the University of San Diego, and when he came home last night after his class, the first thing he noticed was the empty take-out from the taco truck.

"Oh fuck," he said, and then Sierra had cleared her throat, and then he noticed me, an absolute stranger on his couch. He coughed. "Oh fuck, sorry."

Their house, I noticed in the twelve-ish hours I've been here, is sparse. Not a lot of flashy technology or gaming consoles. Their cars are several years old, dented and dusty. Even their phones, I noticed last night before they went off to bed, were a few models outdated.

But their walls are covered in photos. They aren't as good as Katie's professional ones, honestly, but they are real. Down the hall to the bedrooms, there's a series. I noticed it last night, but this morning, after a sleep in a bed that's not as comfy as a hotel but was made with more compassion, I study it further.

It's them, Sierra and Reed. They've taken a picture in front of the same tree for the last six years. I can tell the year they got Marnie. She's just a puppy there. Now she snores louder than my father.

It would make Quil smile, and I think about texting him a video.

He texted last night, to make sure I was safe and that Sierra and Reed were as nice as Katie and Seth said.

My phone digs into my palm, and I move back to the guest bedroom to get dressed after my shower. I think I'm the only one up.

Dressing quickly (because I'm almost out of options and a horrible last-minute packer and I don't know where the nearest Walmart is), I sit on the edge of the bed.

I type many, many messages before deciding not to send anything at all. It would be cruel to say what I'm thinking, especially when I'm not on my way back to him. So I don't tell him. But I think it, hoping that for all our years together, Quil and I have a bit of telepathy too.

I miss you. I'm sorry. I love you.