CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Abilene
Monday
This is surreal.
That’s the only word that fits as I sit at my kitchen table, hands wrapped around a mug of tea that’s already gone lukewarm, watching a woman I haven’t seen since I was barely old enough to form real memories smile at me as if no time has passed at all.
Mara.
My aunt.
I know that’s who she is because I’ve been told so. Because there are photographs, sun-faded and curled at the edges, of her holding me on her hip when I was small, both of us laughing at something outside the frame.
Because my mother’s handwriting mentioned her just often enough to leave a shape where she should’ve been.
But memory-wise? She’s almost a stranger.
And yet she feels warm. Open. Easy in my space in a way that should feel invasive but somehow doesn’t.
She cradles her tea between both hands, inhaling the steam like it’s a luxury.
“I forgot how good real honey smells,” she says. “Not the grocery store kind. This smells like summer.”
“That’s… kind of my whole thing,” I say, half smiling.
She laughs softly, eyes crinkling. “Your mother used to say you’d end up with something alive. Plants, animals, anything you could nurture.”
The mention of my mother lands gently and heavily at the same time.
“You were close?” I say.
Mara nods. “Closer than anyone. More distant than anyone too, some days.”
There’s an honesty in that that makes me relax just a little.
“So,” she says finally, setting her mug down. “You were what… eleven? The last time I saw you?”
“Twelve,” I say. “I remember your earrings more than anything else. Big gold hoops.”
She laughs outright. “Oh, wow. Those were tragic.”
“I thought you were glamorous,” I admit. “You smelled of oranges. And cigarettes.”
“Also tragic,” she says, delighted. “But yes. That sounds like me.”
I watch her as she talks. The way she gestures with her hands. The way her smile comes easily. She looks nothing like my mother, and somehow, exactly like her.
We talk.
Really talk.
The kind where the tea goes cold, and you forget to refill it because you’re too busy circling the shape of a life you only half-know.
“So where did you go?” I ask finally. “After you left.”
Mara smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Everywhere. Nowhere. Depends on the year.”
