Travel by X-jet had spoiled Marie, to the point where she had forgotten how much slower commercial flights were in comparison. The trip back to Mississippi had taken just over six hours, which included a layover in Atlanta, during which she'd had ample time to browse the various gift shops and read up on the latest celebrity gossip. And since commercial flights were also much less efficient at getting her to her target destination, she'd had to fly into Jackson and then rent a car to drive the remaining ninety miles to Meridian.

By the time she pulled into the driveway of her family's home, it was close to 10pm—later than what was considered a decent time to be calling on anyone. It wasn't ideal, but the lights were on downstairs, and that meant someone was still awake. Whether or not that someone would answer the door, however, remained to be seen.

On the exterior, nothing had changed. The house was painted the same blue with white trim that it had been when Marie left. Its large porch, supported by columns, was as inviting as it had ever been. It was probably just nostalgia, but seeing the house again brought her more comfort than she was expecting. She hoped that was a good sign.

Before she could change her mind, Marie got out of the car and retrieved her bags from the trunk. If she actually took the time to stop and think about what she was doing, she would've got back into the car and gone to a hotel instead. But she was determined to see her homecoming all the way through. She was just Sam and Ruth D'Ancanto's daughter, coming home for a visit. Normal people went home to see their parents all the time.

Marie opened the screen door and knocked on the front door. After a moment, a face appeared at the window, peering out with suspicion at the unexpected visitor. It disappeared quickly, and then there was a long pause, during which Marie waited with increasing anxiety. Finally, the door opened.

The woman in the pink floral housecoat looked older than the one in Marie's memories—a little more gray, and a lot more tired. But the one thing that hadn't changed was the disapproving frown on her face.

"Hi Mama."

"Anna-Marie." Her tone was terse. "I wasn't expecting you."

And there was Marie's answer. The letter hadn't been a plea for her to come home. Not that she had truly let herself believe that it was, but something had compelled Mama to send the letter.

"You wrote to me, so I thought..." Marie let the sentence trail off because she had no idea how to finish it. What had she been thinking? That she'd drop in for a nice, friendly talk? That because Bobby's parents had missed him, hers must have as well?

Mama waved a dismissive hand and shook her head. "That was your daddy's doing. I don't know what possessed him, but he made me promise that I'd write, and so I did."

Yes, she'd written the absolute bare minimum. Any less and it would've been a lie to say that she'd sent a letter; any more and it might have actually been informational. Still, Marie found it encouraging to hear that at least one of her parents might want to reconcile.

"Is Daddy here?" Considering that she had no idea what was wrong with him, Marie was unsure where he was likely to be. At home? At a hospice? The letter was postmarked five days ago, it could already be too late. "I came as soon as I knew," she added quickly.

Her mother's cool façade faltered, just a little. "The ambulance took him to the hospital yesterday. He went downhill so fast, and I—I just couldn't take care of him anymore."

It sounded like an illness, and not an accident. "He's sick?"

"Cancer."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Marie didn't know why she had just apologized, except that she didn't know what else to say.

"Well," Mama paused, and after she composed herself, the ice returned to her voice, "I suppose you'd better come in. It's no good standing out on the porch all night. The neighbors will talk."

Marie was given a wide berth as she entered the house. Her mother's extreme caution wasn't warranted, but it was understandable given the circumstances that surrounded the manifestation of Marie's powers. She was all too aware of the impression that her parents had been left with.

A knot formed in her stomach, and Marie forced herself not to think about the past. "I'm not going to hurt you, Mama," she said quietly.

"Did they fix you, then? At that school?"

"That's not how it works."

"I suppose that's what they told you," Mama replied.

Marie looked around. The front room had been turned into a make-shift hospital room. A hospital bed had been set up on one side, and there was a small chest of drawers next to it with boxes of medical supplies on top. A bag of clear liquid still hung on the IV pole near the head of the bed. It seemed like Daddy had been sick for a while.

Mama tried another angle. "We heard there was a cure. On the news."

"There was." Marie was aware of what her mother was hinting at, and had even planned to mention it if that was the only way she'd be let into the house. But if she told Mama that she had taken the cure, what would it change? Would it suddenly make her open her arms and welcome Marie home with a warm hug? No. A cured mutant was still a mutant, and either way, she was an abomination in the eyes of God and her parents.

"Of course that no-good husband of yours would have put it into your head that this was all 'natural', so I'm sure you wouldn't have wanted to take it."

The barb was not meant as an insult to Marie, but she felt the sting of it anyway. Her husband, she was certain, wanted nothing to do with her. "I wouldn't know. I haven't seen him in years," she said with a forced air of nonchalance. "I'm with someone else now."

Mama's eyes narrowed. "Is he a—like you?"

"Worse, he's a yankee, from Boston," Marie deadpanned. Then, realizing that it had probably not been the best response, she backtracked. "It's fine, I don't have to stay here. I just wanted to see Daddy, that's all. I'll go to a hotel."

Mama sighed heavily, and then said, "No, no. The spare room's already made up. I thought your grandparents might've stayed here, but they've been over at Sadie's since they've come up."

Aunt Sadie was Daddy's younger sister. She lived—or at least she used to live—on the other side of the city. "Granny-Mae and Papaw are here?"

Marie was sure that she was a terrible person for not thinking to ask how they were doing, or even inquiring if they were still alive. But she had tried not to give her past life much thought in the years since she'd left, and regrettably that had meant severing all connections she might have once had.

"Yes, of course they came up. And don't you get any funny ideas about trying to wheedle your way back into their lives, Anna-Marie. They've been through enough as it is."

"No ma'am." There was no other response that Marie could have given. Matters weren't helped by the fact that she didn't know what her father's side of the family had been told about what had happened. Or even how they felt about mutants.

Satisfied that Marie wouldn't be ruining any more homes, at least for that evening, Mama nodded. "Well, I'm going to turn in. It's been a long day, and I've got to be at the hospital early tomorrow."

The hospital was not a place that Marie particularly wanted to go, but it sounded like she wasn't going to be able to avoid it. "I'd like to go with you, if that's okay," she told Mama. And then clarified, "I'll drive separate."

Mama's lips pursed, and Marie figured that meant that she was getting ready to say no. However, in a tired voice she said, "I suppose I can't stop you. There's food in the kitchen, I trust you remember where that is—"

Marie pointed in the direction of the kitchen.

"The ladies from church have been dropping off dishes all week. And as I said, there's fresh sheets on the spare bed upstairs." She left Marie like that, with no 'goodnight' or anything, and headed for the room at the back of the house.

"Thank you," Marie called after her. Manners were manners after all.

The house had three bedrooms. One on the ground floor, which had been turned into a sewing room before Marie was born, and then the two upstairs. One belonged to Marie's parents, and the other had been hers. Since Mama was sleeping downstairs, she must have rearranged some things. Probably so that she wasn't far in case Daddy needed anything in the middle of the night.

Marie carried her bags upstairs, turning on the hall light as she went. Her parents' bedroom door was open, and it looked like the sewing items had been moved into there. Several bolts of fabric, an ironing board, and the sewing machine all stood inside. Not neatly arranged like it had been downstairs, but as if it had been hastily stored in there out of necessity.

The door at the end of the hall was closed. Marie's old room. When she moved out, she had taken several boxes with her. Anything deemed important or of immediate need was packed up and put in the back of the pickup truck. But there hadn't been space for everything. Marie had left her furniture, books, stuffed animals, and most of the decorations on her wall behind. The plan had always been to deal with it later.

She was prepared to walk into a time capsule—a room frozen in time at the moment she'd left. Memories and emotions were almost certainly going to flood in, so Marie built up a dam in her mind against them. She took a deep breath, and when she was ready, she opened the door and turned on the light.

Huh.

The room that she was standing in was not at all the same as it had been when she'd last seen it. There was new furniture, new curtains, and even new paint on the walls. No trace of her former bedroom remained.

In hindsight, it made more sense than what she had expected to find. It had been close to eight years since she'd moved out of her parents' home, it was hard to blame them for re-purposing her room. Even before she'd left Mississippi there had been talk of turning it into a guest room. But actually seeing it that way was a bit of a punch to the gut.

Marie set her bags on the unfamiliar bed. She wasn't tired enough to sleep, even though it was almost 11pm, New York time. Her mind was still racing, so she quietly headed back downstairs. The kitchen had always been welcoming, and it wouldn't be good to fall asleep with an empty stomach.

Once downstairs, she took her time wandering through the front room, and gave it more than a cursory glance. Most of the knick-knacks on the shelves had not changed. The piano was still in its place of honor, and Daddy's fiddle was in its case on top. She wondered if Mama still gave lessons.

Her parents' 'gifts' had all been musical. Mama could sing and play piano, and Daddy played the fiddle, harmonica, banjo, and guitar. The two of them used to go on tour around the south in the summer, and play at church picnics, weddings, and for kids at vacation bible school. At least, that was what Marie had been told.

By the time she was old enough to travel with them, they'd discovered that Marie had inherited exactly none of her parents' musical talent. It was the first way in which she had disappointed her parents, who had always imagined a family troupe of musicians. The Darling D'Ancantos, or something equally cringe-worthy.

Instead of spending the summers traveling, Marie had instead been sent to stay with Granny-Mae and Papaw, who had moved down to Louisiana after Papaw retired. It would have been easy to feel hurt or resentful that she had been left behind, but Marie had made the best of it, and the summers that she'd spent at her grandparents' house were the best memories she had of her childhood.

As Marie walked toward the kitchen, she passed the wall of photos. It had always been a visual record of her life from birth through age seventeen. However, like her room, it too had been altered. The baby photos and school portraits had been replaced with pictures of her parents' travels, and with old pictures of Mama's family. There was even a recent-looking one of Granny-Mae and Papaw at some kind of party.

All evidence of Anna-Marie D'Ancanto had been erased from existence.

It was only fair that her parents had invented a new life; Marie had invented one for herself as well. She imagined that her parents had carefully crafted a story to go along with the lie, just as she had done. Perhaps they told strangers that their only daughter had been taken from them at a young age, or that God had never seen fit to bless them with a child.

If no mementos sat out where they could be seen every day, then the lie was re-enforced. They wouldn't ever have to think about her, and subsequently could be spared the pain of their loss. That was something that Marie knew more than a little about.

She shook loose those dark thoughts before they had a chance to take hold, and continued walking.

The kitchen was much the same as it had been, although the avocado green cabinets had been repainted a more modern off-white. When Marie opened the fridge, she understood what Mama had meant. It was stuffed full of casserole dishes and covered bowls. Lord only knew what most of them contained, so Marie went about lifting lids and peeking under foil until she found something that looked like an ambrosia salad in a pink Tupperware bowl.

It had been years since she'd had an ambrosia salad, so she carried the big bowl over to the counter and scooped out a large portion for herself into a cereal bowl from the cupboard. Then, she dug in. Her eyes closed as the sweet, fruity flavors coated her tongue. It wasn't anywhere near as healthy as a regular salad, not with the mini-marshmallows and all, but it tasted better, and brought her back to the many church picnics and backyard barbecues of her youth.

Marie was lost on a nostalgia trip, and wondering if she could convince her colleagues at Xavier's to hold a pot luck, when the clock in the front room chimed the quarter-hour. Crap. She had forgotten to let Bobby know that she had arrived.

She took out her phone and brought up his contact on the screen. She didn't really want to talk to him that evening, but she had said that she would call. It rang, but when he didn't pick up, she figured he was probably still at the party. Or maybe he had fallen asleep already.

It was easier to talk to his voicemail anyway. It didn't ask her questions or make her feel guilty about lying. "Hi, Bobby. I made it here safe and sound. I'm staying with Mama, for tonight at least. We're going to go to the hospital in the morning, so I'll let you know what I find out after that. Give my love to everyone back home. Bye."

She sat at the table for a while longer, with her phone out. She thought that maybe he'd call back once he'd got her message, but the phone never rang.