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“Fries and onion rings?”

“Multiple orders, obviously.”

Gathering herself, Molly took her doctor’s advice and tried to focus on one thing at a time.

After conquering the doldrums of discharge, Molly sat with Roy and Alannah at their favorite burger joint tucked into one end of an ancient strip mall, unchanged for decades.

And that constancy was a good thing. For that moment, familiarity was a flicker of hope—even in the form of greasy cheeseburgers and fries drowning in malt vinegar—keeping her grounded as she sat with two of her best friends and this strange new reality between them.

They were very much like the Roy and Alannah Molly recalled. Roy: ushering them to the perfect booth for a fast-food campout, guessing everyone’s orders with a prescience borne from years of practice, and jumping to grab their trays the moment their number was called. Alannah: commenting on the age of the fry oil with the judgment of someone who actually knows a thing or two about fry oil, yet devouring her onion rings anyway. Alannah and Roy together: fiercely in love and obvious about it, if lingering glances and insistences on sharing each other’s meals were any indication.

Molly almost felt like a passenger in the whole experience, oddly passive as she relaxed into the ease of having Roy acquire every condiment under the sun while Alannah pondered which ice cream parlor would earn their patronage that evening.

It was all so normal, so familiar.

But at the same time, Roy and Alannah seemed older, different. Roy was more glued to his phone than Molly had ever seen him, regularly checking the time or for updates from the babysitter, often interrupting himself mid-sentence to report on what the kids were up to. And Alannah had at some point decided that mustard wasn’t the devil’s golden punishment on the world and happily smothered her burger with it. At Molly’s bewildered expression—Alannah’s anti-mustard crusade had once involved a passionate PowerPoint presentation—she simply shrugged and said, “It was my pregnancy with Jessa. Craved it all the time and it never really went away. There was a week when it was the only thing I could eat. Spooned it straight from the jar.” To which Roy added with a good-natured exasperation, “The jar of fancy, expensive French stuff, by the way.”

These were little differences that shone like neon signs in Molly’s face. She couldn’t help but feel like they’d lived a life without her, even when she’d allegedly been right there with them. Not remembering made it feel very much like they’d left her behind.

“So,” Roy began, fingers walking their way across the table, helping himself to whatever fries and onion rings Molly hadn’t finished. “You’re coming home with us, yeah?”

Molly snorted. “Unless either of you wants to pose a convincing argument as to why I should go live with a stranger. Well, a sort-of stranger with whom I have no love lost”—Alannah’s expression twitched, just slightly, at Molly’s choice of words—“then yes, I’m going home with you.”

Roy shook his head. “Never here to argue with you. I don’t think I’ve ever won, anyway. Just here to help however I can.”

Alannah sat conspicuously silent.

Molly’s head tilted. “Do you have an argument for going to live with him?”

“Uh—nope,” Alannah said in the least confident tone possible. “Well, okay, kind of. It’s just—I’m not trying to push you, really. I would literally love to have you around all the time. But, like I mentioned at the hospital, I do wonder if being somewhere familiar would be good for you. I only want what’s best for you, you know?”

“You and Roy are familiar,” Molly insisted.

“Yes, we are,” Alannah said, scooting closer to Molly in their booth and slinging an arm around her shoulders with a squeeze. “But it’s a little different. And, I don’t know, maybe it’s a silly way to think about it, but I feel like you deserve to trust yourself. You know, the you who picked your life and made it what it is now.”

That, above all else, struck a nerve. A nerve Molly would have, frankly, preferred to have left unstruck.

Molly was a lot of things, afraid maybe most of all. But she liked to think she was brave too. Brave enough to face her own life. Smart enough to trust that a version of herself had made all the decisions that led her here, even if she didn’t remember them. She was neither a coward nor an idiot, and she hated that hiding from her home with Bishop might imply she was both.

“Oh no,” she said softly, a new decision crystalizing inside her. She sank against Alannah in their booth. “I don’t like how much sense that makes.”

Alannah just hugged her tighter.

Before

“Feels wrong to leave you here.”

Molly almost sighed as her dad got out of his old pickup for the third time since beginning this goodbye process.

“That’s kind of how boarding school works,” she said as he approached.

If he kept looking so uncertain, she wouldn’t be able to hold it together. She was supposed to meet Roy for a practice walk-through of her class schedule in twenty minutes, and he’d know instantly if she’d been crying. Then he’d tease her for it, because he’d already been at Laburnum for two weeks for his athletics intensive and apparently boarding school was “no big deal.”

This whole thing had been her idea, after all. She was ready for it. She’d toured, she’d interviewed, she’d stalked the admissions website at midnight, seven a.m., and nearly every hour in between. She’d imagined herself here so vividly that she’d tried to photoshop herself into one of the brochure photos when pitching the idea to her dad.

Her dad, who now pulled her into yet another hug. She’d had more hugs from him in the last fifteen minutes than she’d had in the last calendar year. Historically, Richard Graham wasn’t much of a hugger, but it appeared that moving his fourteen-year-old only child into her prestigious prep school dormitory was adequate inspiration to change his ways.

“I’ll be fine, Dad.” Molly couldn’t think too hard about him driving away. It made her sinuses sting.