There's a bathroom in the church, like there are in most churches. I go to it. Plumbing doesn't work, so I don't go to it to do anything necessary. I go to it so I can be alone. Close the door, and it's almost dark. Not the dark from outside. A warm dark. A blanket. Moonlight pours through the window high above – a privacy window, is what it's called – and once my eyes adjust, I can see everything pretty clearly. Old white sink and toilet, plugged into the wall under the window, I think going kind of yellow. There's a dusty mirror above the sink. The floor is tile. Stained with stuff I don't want to think about. But hell, I lived in a prison. Mystery stains don't really bother me. Which I guess is why I'm okay sitting down on the floor, to the left of the door, with my arms wrapped around my knees. I can hear the others, but not very well. Not underneath my blanket, safe and sound, me and my bow.

But someone knocks not long after I close myself in here. If it has to be someone, I hope it's Carl.

"You decent?"

Dad.

I rub one of my eyes, then stretch out to grapple at the doorknob until it turns, the door opens, and my father is revealed. Some light comes in, but not a lot. The bathroom is connected to the spare room, so that's an entire area of lightlessness to stifle out the candlelight from the sanctuary. Still. My dark warm blanket is definitely thinner now.

Kind of asked for Dad to come check up on me, I guess. Wasn't being too subtle when I came back into the church and made a beeline for the bathroom. Tried to hide the tears. Probably didn't matter much.

Dad looks down at me, and I say, "Owen'll be gone by morning."

His tongue moves around in his mouth.

"It's for the best," I say.

A moment, and then he says, "So I guess this means you ain't up for playing no piano?"

It's a weak attempt at a joke – if it is even a joke – and I don't bother replying.

He clears his throat. "Leah wants to talk to you."

"Leah?" I repeat.

Ah, that gets him. He shifts his weight. "I've called her that for thirteen years."

"And I called her Mom."

He has no reply.

"I know you said you didn't sleep with her." I don't feel very passionate about this conversation, I find. My potential for emotion has more or less been drained. My film's up, keeping any new feelings from sneaking in. All I really am right now is curious. "But something changed, didn't it?"

Dad lowers to the ground. Leans against the doorframe. Doesn't look at me for a while and then does. "What she did?"

Special gentle voice. What does he mean? Oh, faking her death and sending me away. Yeah, that.

"There ain't no justifyin' that."

Nope.

"No erasin' it."

Nope.

"But I know her, Sydney."

My film hardens. Constricts. Readies.

"I forgot that. Felt like maybe I never had, after all. But it turns out, I did. And I still do."

Oh, Dad. You're under her spell again. Won't be long now. Next time we're in a place with a bed. Then again, I know enough about sex to know that a bed is optional. Maybe later on the two of them will go behind the pews and have one of their special nights together, the ones that don't mean anything, oh no, are Mama and Daddy getting back together? No, that'll never happen. We just can't keep our hands off each other, sweetheart.

"Her head don't work right all the time, baby girl. It's been that way since I met her."

Her head don't work right. Well, that's obvious enough, looking back. Looking here. And yet, Dad, after you met her, you still stayed with her long enough to get her pregnant.

"But she loves you."

And that – that is what cuts a slit in the film. Out of that slit comes: "Bullshit."

"She loves you more'n anything."

"Just like you do, right?" I'm impressed, distantly, by how calm my voice is. Then again, it might be too calm. The creepy kind of calm. "I mean, that's what you always tell me."

"And I always mean it."

"Then why –"

"What?"

I examine a scuff on the floor, possibly made by me, by these boots, these black boots with the studs. Love these boots. I answer Dad in that same calm voice. In spite of the slit, the film still has me bound, for the most part. Protecting me and keeping me under control.

"You told me Uncle Merle loved me more than anything, but he kidnapped me. You're telling me that LC – Leah, if you want – loves me more than anything, but she snuck out one night and had an ex-boyfriend tear a chunk out of her arm with his teeth. And made us leave her. And was dead for a year." From the scuff to my daddy's eyes. Mm. They tell me that this really isn't going the way he planned. "And you say you love me more than anything." I shake my head. "But I just don't really trust those words anymore, y'know?"

One, two, three beats. They sound like they're having a ball in the sanctuary. I wonder if Owen came back in, or if he'll ever come back in. Maybe he'll just wander off into the woods, no bags, no anything.

Dad says, "Sydney. People are complicated. They screw up."

"Yeah. They do."

"You can't let it ruin you."

Neither of us says anything for ten seconds or so after that, and neither of us looks away. I don't see a reason to. We're not fighting, after all, are we, Daddy? I'm not ruined.

"Do you want to talk to her or not?" he asks.

"Why does she want to talk to me?"

"Everyone out there's pretty much figured out that Owen's good as gone. She's the only one other than you who knew him."

Maybe she wants to hold hands and mourn for our final fallen neighbor. Maybe she hopes we can bond over our most recent mutual loss.

"Let her talk to you, Sydney."

And I'm as surprised as anyone else would be when I say, "Fine."

. . . . .

Since reuniting with the woman who was my mother, I have not had a real conversation with her. The closest I've come is when I shrieked at her while my head was trying to process her being alive right after we found her at Woodbury, and her crying back, trying to get me to listen to words that really didn't matter. But now, as she enters the bathroom and shuts the door behind her, and we're all alone, I'm pretty much indifferent. A very, very far cry from that shrieking girl from a year ago. God bless the film.

LC sits and leans against the wall opposite me, but a little to the left, so we're not directly across from one another. It takes her so long to start speaking that I'm wondering if she expects me to say something first, maybe around the same time hell freezes over.

"He was the last thing you had left of Tyler," comes the voice made for lullabies. "I know you wanted him to stay. I did, too. I'm sorry."

I think.

Then I say, "You abandoned me."

And she says, "Yes, I did."

"Why?"

"I thought I wanted to die."

"And leave me behind."

No response. If I wanted to, I know I could see her just fine in the moonlight, but I have no desire.

Storytime.

"Right after the turn – after we got separated from Merle in Atlanta – our group, we went to the CDC, because we thought it would be safe and they might have a cure."

"I know. Rick told me all about it."

"So he told you how the scientist there locked us all inside and waited for the place to blow up?"

"Yes."

"Dad was scared. Carl was scared, pretty much everyone was scared. Except, I wasn't scared." I lean my head back. The window pane is very dirty. "See, I figured, if I died, I'd go to heaven. And I would see you again. I miss Mom, I told Dad. I wanna see Mom . . . The scientist, he eventually opened the doors back up. And I left with Dad. For Dad. But if he hadn't been there . . ." And now, now the desire does spike in me, and I do look at her and see her just fine in the moonlight. And what do you know, she's already crying. "If there is a heaven," I say, "I guess I would have been pretty disappointed when I showed up there, huh?"

She wipes her eyes. Oddly enough, mine have gone completely dry. "Baby . . ."

"You know, if you had asked me – right before the turn – which parent I could depend on most . . . I would have said you."

And then, suddenly, my eyes are not dry. Suddenly, they are flooded.

"You were a drunk . . . I knew you were a drunk. I'd cleaned up puddles of vomit and woke you up because your alarm clock couldn't do the trick, and made you coffee, and lied when people called for you, said you were in the shower, or at work, or anyplace doing something other than stumbling around like – like a damn walker! Or passed out in your office! Take all that into account, and I still would have said you!"

The film falls off of me, I'm a snake shedding skin. No longer bound. No longer constricted. No longer under control.

"Because you were Mom! You were Home! You were Everything's gonna be alright, honey!"

I should lower my voice. Loud voices bring people, and other things. Oh, soaking, swollen eyes now, just like LC's. But I laugh, laugh at the dirty window.

"You know, Mom," I say, just to try the silly little word out, to mock it, to listen to how ridiculous it sounds, "I would love so much to let you in again. Even just a little. There's so much I should be talking to you about."

I started my period.

Carl gave me this necklace, isn't it pretty? Let me tell you about our first kiss.

Things are off with Dad and me.

Rosita cut my hair, do you like it?

I want Nana and Papaw.

Mom, I've lost so many people, and I miss them all the time. Let me tell you about them.

Owen sort of just broke my heart.

"But just hearing your voice . . . I can't even stand it. "

Her head is leaned back like mine was. She's beautiful, shining white. She's always been so beautiful, even with tears streaming down her pretty pale face, but she's hideous, too. They always told me, back in school, that it's what's on the inside that counts. I never knew how right they were.

"You left me. You worked with the Governor. Slept with him."

Her beautiful face twists all up to match what's inside her and she covers it with a hand. Her shoulders shake.

"I understand that I grew in your belly, and came from you, and that everything about me is half you, and that you raised me, pretty much on your own." My throat catches up with my eyes, so as the tears really start going, it gets harder to talk. I just talk with more force then, higher volume, spit it out like I mean it, and I damn well do. "But somehow . . . you've stopped being my mother. You are just not my mother."

And now I'm on my feet. My body feels so light.

"I can deal with Owen leaving. So many worse things have happened to me than that. And now, ha! The worst thing of all comes in here and tries to comfort me. And you know what?" I viciously swipe my palms across my cheeks, squeeze the tears out with fists. "Good job. I feel better."

No, I just feel. And that's not better. But she doesn't need to know that. She doesn't need to know anything about me anymore.

I reach for the doorknob, but wait, hand, I'm not done. I turn back to LC. Leah. Mom. Mama. Whoever the hell she is.

"Losing Owen is nothing. Losing my mother . . . now, that was somethin'." I step towards her. Lean down a little. "But I got over it," I hiss. "I can get over anything."

Now I back up and take hold of the doorknob. She's slumped against the wall, one hand smothering her cries and the other damming off tears. Sobs rack her body. Beautiful Leah Cartwright has become an awful mess of a woman. The thing is, she finally looks it, falling apart on a stained bathroom floor in a church with YOU'LL BURN FOR THIS carved into its side.

I open the door. "Don't you worry about me. I won't worry about you."