Marie dragged her feet on Tuesday morning, but still managed to make it to the funeral home in time for the family's appointment. They had started without her anyway, which suited Marie just fine. It wasn't like Mama needed, or even wanted, her input. She was there for the moral support, because Papaw had asked, and loathe as she was to admit it, Remy was right. She should be there.

Speaking of...she hadn't heard from Remy since he'd left, not that she had expected to. He was under no obligation to call or text her. Even so, she'd half-expected to receive a text last night that said he'd made it back to New Orleans in one piece. He had told her that he'd be back by the evening, so maybe she would text him later to see if that meant before or after supper. It made a difference how much food she prepared.

"Does that sound okay to you, honey?" Granny-Mae asked at regular intervals, and Marie nodded each time.

The service was going to be on Friday. They had decided against a viewing, and instead elected to have a memorial service at church, with a reception to follow, and then a private graveside burial after. Nothing that Marie could find fault with, and certainly not the elaborate affair that she had been expecting.

When she was thirteen, Nana, Mama's mama, had died, and Marie remembered it being an all day event. The viewing in the morning, followed by the long funeral service, the service at the graveside, and then finally, a reception back at Nana's. That had been the worst. Practically the whole town had shown up and stuffed themselves into her front room. And everyone had brought food. Marie had never seen so many casseroles, potato dishes, and foods encased in gelatin in her whole life.

After a while, the crowd had gotten to her, so Marie had taken a book into one of the bedrooms upstairs. She had every intention of reading until she realized that there was a working phone on the nightstand. She wasn't supposed to call Remy without permission because it was long distance, but figured that since Nana was dead, the phone company couldn't bill her and the call would be free.

Daddy found her, over an hour later, and he was not happy. Marie pouted, and pleaded her case, and in the end, he decided to keep the call a secret from Mama because it was unlikely that anyone would look too closely at the bill when closing out the account. He had instituted a one-month ban on calls to Remy, however, and expected her help with more chores in exchange.

As far as she knew, Mama had never found out.

After the business at the funeral home concluded, her family was going to get lunch and then go over to the church to talk with the pastor. Marie had gotten out of it by saying that she had other plans that afternoon, and thankfully, no one pressed her for details,

She sat in the parking lot for a while, after everyone else had driven away, just thinking. Now that the funeral date was set, her time in Meridian had a definite end. There was no point, and no real reason, to stay much beyond Friday. She needed to get back to her classes anyway, so leaving that weekend made the most sense. If she booked a flight for Saturday, then that would give her all day Sunday to go over whatever notes Logan had left about her students, and to put the events of the past week behind her.

This time, she was going to do things the right way, and leave on her own terms. She was going to take care of all of her business down south, and say her goodbyes. There would be no loose threads left dangling. No reason to return to Meridian.

It was best to make the most of it while she was there.

Marie left the funeral home and went to Walmart, where she filled her cart with an assortment of groceries and a bag of charcoal. Remy used to love grilling, so she thought that maybe they could eat supper out on the patio that evening.

Then, she swung over to the packing supply aisle, and picked up a couple bundles of ready-to-assemble boxes, some bubble wrap, and a roll of packing tape. She would arrange for the things that she wanted to keep to be shipped back to New York, and then donate the clothes that she no longer wanted. She'd ask Remy about the rest.

There. She could do this. She could be a practical adult who was getting ready to close one chapter of her life and move on to the next. People did it all the time. It was part of life. Nothing to be sad about.

It had gotten dark while she was in the store, and when Marie looked up at the sky as she was leaving, she could see that a thunderstorm was rolling in. It had already started to rain lightly, but the drops increased in frequency and size on her way to the car.

Both Marie and the boxes were a bit damp by the time they made it into the house. She leaned the two cardboard bundles against the wall in the kitchen. They would be fine once they dried.

The lights flickered. That probably wasn't a good sign.

Marie had just finished drying off when Bobby called. Since she couldn't continue to ignore him for much longer, she picked up.

"Hey, Bobby."

"Hey. I was just calling to see how you were doing."

She gave him an edited version of what had happened since they'd last spoken and he said his condolences.

"Thank you," she said.

"When's the funeral?"

"Friday. There's going to be a service at the church, and then we'll drive to the cemetery from there."

"And you're sure that you don't want me to fly down? I could probably convince Storm to let me borrow the jet."

Of course she was sure. It was probably about the only thing that she was sure of.

"That's sweet," she said, "But honestly, I'm tryin' not to make waves. It's kinda like how it was with your family, you know? Mama doesn't even really tolerate me, and if the jet landed on the lawn outside the church I think that would just about do her in."

"All right. If you think it's better for me to stay here, then I will. You'll let me know how it goes?"

She had expected him to put up more of a fight, and was relieved, albeit a little hurt, when that didn't happen. "Yeah."

Logan's words replayed in her mind. "If you don't want him at your side...then are you sure that you even want to marry him?"

It was a good question.

There was a bright flash. Marie looked out the kitchen window. The sky had darkened quite a bit more since she had come home, and the wind had picked up. It could be nothing, or it could be a sign that something worse was on the way. During her childhood, Meridian had managed to avoid getting hit by most tornadoes. That didn't mean, however, that she didn't have vivid, and somewhat terrifying, memories of having to seek shelter in a safe place as sirens wailed in the background.

A loud clap of thunder shook the house as she headed down the hall and into the bathroom.

"What was that?" Bobby asked.

"Just the storm." She put the plug in the bathtub and turned on the faucet. It never hurt to be prepared.

"It must be raining pretty hard, it sounds like you're in a flood."

"I'm filling the tub," she explained. "We're on well water. If the power goes out, the pump stops working." And while there was bottled water to drink, she might need something to use for washing up or flushing the toilet.

"I guess I never realized that your parents lived in a rural area. I always pictured it as more of a suburb from the way you described it."

Was it bad that she hadn't even remembered to pretend that she was still at her parents' house? And instead had just started talking about the house she was staying in with her not-yet-ex husband? "It's—well, we're not way out in the country or anything, but everyone on our road has their own well. And the power grid's old."

"Kind of sounds like my uncle's property in the Berkshires."

Maybe she needed to hear how much Bobby was in love with her. Maybe that would help, and she would remember all of the reasons that they were together. Marie turned off the water and sat down on the edge of the tub. The monogrammed towels were practically hanging right in front of her face, so she turned in the opposite direction and ignored their existence.

"Hey, can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"And you promise to give me an honest answer?"

"Okay, now I'm worried," he said.

"No, it's nothing bad. I was just thinking about some things, and I realized that I never asked you why you wanted to marry me."

There was a pause.

"You really want me to say?"

She sat up straighter, sensing that she wasn't going to like his response. "Yes."

"You were my first crush, and I really liked you," Bobby said. "But then, you know, the whole thing with your skin got in the way."

So far, Marie wasn't impressed. "That was why we almost broke up." That and all of the time that he had been spending with Kitty.

"Right, but then you took the cure, and I realized how much you must love me if you were willing to give up your mutation for me, so—"

Marie swore she could hear a record scratch. "Wait. Who told you that I took the cure so that I could be with you?"

"Well...I mean, didn't you?"

"No, I took it because I wanted to take it. For me." And all of the shit that she had been through as a result of having her powers.

"Oh, I guess I just assumed," he said.

What the hell? "And that's why you asked me to marry you?"

"I don't know! I mean, everyone likes you—my parents think you're nice, and I thought we'd been together long enough. It was time. That's what adults do, right?"

Some probably did. Out of obligation, like he suggested. But it didn't sound, or feel, very romantic. Had she ever really loved him? Or was she just happy to be with him so that she could forget about her past?

"What if it turns out that the cure's not permanent and my powers come back?" Marie asked.

"Dr. McCoy said that pretty much only happens when the mutant has powers that are off the chart. I don't think that you have to worry."

That statement right there highlighted part of the problem. She had always been 'poor little orphan Rogue' in his eyes. The girl that Mystique had tricked, Magneto had kidnapped, and the X-men had needed to save. He had never seen her as his equal.

"But let's say for the sake of argument that they do come back and I still can't control them," she said. "What happens then?"

"Do we have a future together, you mean?"

"Yes."

Again, he paused. This time for much longer.

Marie turned off the faucet. "Whatever you have to say, I can handle it," she told him.

He sighed. "It's not going to happen, but if it did? Then, I don't know. It's not the future that I envisioned."

"With someone who won't accidentally kill you in your sleep."

"I didn't say that. Look, why don't we talk about this some more when you get back to New York? I think you're probably upset about your father and you're playing the 'what if' game. That's no good."

Yeah, that was exactly what she was doing. What if she had never run away? What if she had gone to the hospital the day Remy woke up? What if they had left Mississippi together? So many 'what ifs'.

The lights flickered again, but this time they stayed off.

"I have to go," she told Bobby, and then didn't give him a chance to respond before she said goodbye.

Marie went to the cabinet in the kitchen where she was pretty sure they'd kept the storm supplies, and prayed that Remy hadn't done something stupid like move them all into the storm shelter.

Luckily, she found a battery powered lantern that appeared to contain fresh batteries. She carried it over to the table, and then sat down so that she could call Logan.

"You feel like flexing your claws and sticking someone full of holes?" she asked after he picked up.

"Generally," he deadpanned. "This 'someone' got a name?"

"I'm not sure I should say. If you went through with it, it would make life kinda awkward for you at the mansion."

Logan, of course, figured it out. "What'd Popsicle say to you?"

"The truth, finally, and it wasn't anything that I didn't ask him for. I've just got a load of thinking to do now. You know, he actually thought that I took the cure for him?" She tried to keep it jovial and laugh it off, but it quickly fell flat.

"Screw awkward, I know a whole lotta ways to make a body disappear. Just saying."

That made her laugh for real. "Thank you, Logan."

They talked about classes for a bit, and he filled her in on some of the things that had been going on at the mansion. She didn't think that he was convinced that she was as okay as she claimed, but she managed to hang up with him.

Marie tapped her fingers on the table as she contemplated what to do next. She could maybe start sorting through her old belongings in the bedroom, although the lack of decent lighting added a new level of difficulty to the process. As if the memories weren't going to be hard enough to deal with already.

They didn't have many books in the house, or any boardgames that she could play solo, but she did remember seeing a pack of cards on the end table in the front room. She went and grabbed them, and brought them back to the kitchen table.

One thing that she had learned a long time ago, was to never trust a deck of cards in Remy's hands or anywhere in his general proximity. He was very good at sleight of hand, and knew several card tricks, but he also liked to use the cards as projectiles. His mutation allowed him to charge objects with kinetic energy, and cards were cheap.

She had asked him about it once, and he'd told her, "It beats walkin' around with a pocket full of rocks, no?"

By which, of course, he meant that it was more theatrical.

She slid the cards out of the box, and sorted them by suit and rank. Four were missing. A search of the house revealed two more decks, each also missing several cards. The backs were all the same, however, so she combined the decks to create one complete deck, and still came up short an ace of spades and a two of hearts.

"Seriously?"

Her day just got better and better.