The Exact Same Prize

Originally published, in different form, by Little Fiction (June 2012)

If Montana had known Evan’s grandmother was about to toss herself off the roof, she probably would’ve sent Evan a text. But Mina hadn’t mentioned any plans for any roof, had only said, “Have him call me if you can.” A gigantic if, Montana knew, what with Evan’s vendetta against the phone. He treated their phone like a person—like if he ignored it long enough, it would take the hint and stop talking to him altogether. But if Montana was any example for withstanding high-volume neglect, their phone would be doing its thing for at least another year. And who else to answer said phone, if not the live-in receptionist, the sympathizer to every unanswered call? So Montana added Mina’s latest message to her tally, all the calls Evan missed when he’d stayed late at work, which had pretty much been every day for the past year or so, meaning the list looked exactly like what it was: Montana’s attempt to get Evan’s attention by way of suggestive code.

The code didn’t suggest anything, really, except that she missed him, which Montana could’ve come right out and said, but she liked to believe he was still into the chase. Or he used to be anyway. So, message tacked to the fridge, she went to the living room to wait, and while she waited, she watched an episode of Homecoming. It was the one where the kids live in a car for a week before destroying it with rocks, like wreckage was a lesson that could teach them how to live, or how to lead the lives they really wanted, like the lives they really wanted waited just on the other side of mortal risk.

*

Mina left a message with Evan’s girl, then pushed Annette’s hope chest to the window. Annette had always said the yard was a real sight from the roof. Standing up there, Mina should’ve been able to trace her entire life: the cottonwoods her husband planted the year they bought the house; the picket fence he’d built to keep the girls in; the hammock they’d hung for their eldest when she’d asked for her own room; the patches of black grass where their youngest had practiced smoking; and Mina’s garden, the grandmotherly habit she took up when Evan was born. From the roof, she should’ve had a first-rate view. But that day—that month—snow hid the trees and the hammock. The blackened grass was white. Mina’s garden was dead. Everything she’d known had been buried. But Annette—Annette had been right about the fence. Even through the snow and wind, Mina could still see the fence just fine.

*

Evan saw Montana’s note on the fridge (blocking photos of Annette and his first computer and downtown Bozeman in the snow).

Mina: …5/27 - 6:10…7/21 - 7:28…8/15 - 5:45…9/3 - 6:24…10/30 - 6:53…11/12 - 6:30…1/11 - 6pm…

He skimmed, then read, and re-read it. It was worse than broken code. Ugly. Cluttered. The variables barely registered. (Maybe he’d rewrite it later.)

“Hello?” he shouted toward the living room, where he knew Montana was entrenched, watching episode after episode of Homecoming, the reality show about Amish teens who spend a year in secular society before getting married, having kids, raising barns, and dying bored. Montana’s favorite segments were the drug scenes.

“It’s like they want to OD,” she’d say. “It’s like they know how bad we sort of want to see it.”

“I don’t want to see it,” Evan said.

“Yes, you do. It’s like a sex scene. Even when it’s grotesque, you still want to watch it.”

“Hello?” Evan said again. He stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, waving Mina’s messages to get Montana’s attention.

“Hey,” she took off her headphones. “I didn’t hear you get in.” She pointed to the messages. “Did you call her back?”

“Not yet. What’d she want?”

Montana cast a sideways glance at the screen. “She wanted you to call her back.” Evan got close enough to see her laptop. Amish kids were throwing themselves in front of moving cars.

“You didn’t write why she called. You never write why she called.”

“I do enough of that at work, thank you. And unlike some people, I don’t bring work home. It’s not going to kill you to call her back.” Montana lifted her headphones. Evan pinched the cord to stop them from reaching her ears.

“I wouldn’t need to call her back if the message was clear.”

Montana yanked her headphones from her laptop. The narrator’s voice filled the room. The Amish teens were having a run-in with the law. “That clear enough for you?”

Evan shoved her laptop shut and went back to the kitchen. Montana followed him, yelling about “a thing called personal space.” Evan made an overblown show of taking the phone from the wall and dialing his grandmother’s number, then holding an index finger between them, a gesture meant to shut her up and prove he wasn’t intractable.

Montana held her fist to her ear, pinky out to mimic a phone. Slowly, she began to fellate her smallest finger. By the time she was knuckle deep and making smothering noises, Meemaw’s phone had started ringing. Montana mumbled, “My name’s Evan and I’m SO mature,” before stopping short and mouthing, Grow up.

Evan angled the receiver away from his face and said, “I hope your Amish show gets cancelled.”

“Not a fucking chance.”

“Then I hope they all buy TVs and start watching reality shows about Glenview. I hope they convert to Catholicism. I hope they all become Mormon. I hope they do the least interesting thing conceivable.”

“Like writing HTML? Or how about CSS? Which would be duller: PHP or Javascript?” Montana jogged backwards into the living room, her middle fingers wagging all the way. Evan plugged his free ear and counted the remaining rings that stood between him and voicemail.

*

The last time Evan saw his grandmother was just before Annette had reached The End. That’s how Annette had phrased it when she’d still been well enough to write, when she’d still had the energy to send Evan letters, on real paper, in bona fide envelopes, delivered by the hands of actual mailmen, letters that often included photos of his favorite parts of town: the Ellen Theatre, the white stallion, and “the jail that used to be a jail but isn’t a jail because now it’s a museum.” Annette: the living embodiment of a postcard, now no longer living.

Evan hadn’t gotten a letter in over a year. Annette had been too tired to lift a pencil toward The End. But she’d dictated letters to her mother, whom Evan had called Meemaw ever since childhood, when he’d first tried his hand at saying her name. A mistake that had lasted into adulthood, but Meemaw had never corrected him. Just like she’d never mailed Annette’s letters, preferring to read them aloud to Evan during their then-weekly phone calls. That was “more personal,” she’d told him. Evan assumed she didn’t understand how he felt about the phone, that she’d either chosen to ignore or forgotten the fact that his father had called in order to tell Evan he wouldn’t be coming back, and his mother had phoned to break it to Evan that what she had was terminal, and his job offer had come via phone call (on the condition he would move to Illinois, which he’d thought had been an okay request back when the news was new). But it turned out Meemaw had more than one reason for not mailing Annette’s letters. Evan found them bundled when he was home for the funeral, and noticed all the sections she had skipped: Meemaw won’t want to write this, but I told her if she doesn’t, I’m drinking rat poison at dinner. I make her read the letters back, so I’ll know if it’s not in there. Take care of Meemaw, Evan. It gets awful lonely here. A lot of times, it feels like a ghost town. And on the days it doesn’t, I get to wondering if the ghost in town isn’t already me.

When he saw her at the viewing, Meemaw seemed her usual self: she cried and her face looked like a brick wall in a downpour. She accepted condolences like she was clearing plates after a meal. And as she saw Evan off, she told him she didn’t want to see him back in Bozeman: “You’ve got that fancy job in Illinois now.”

“Nothing fancy about coding, Meemaw.”

“Fancy enough to get you to leave.” Evan thought of his father. Annette had always called him The Deserter. She’d told Evan he could be anything he wanted so long as he never abandoned anybody.

“Not that I mind it,” Meemaw said, “but you already took your pick. I don’t want you using me as a reason to come back.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. I came to say goodbye to Mom.”

“Good. Now let’s get you on your way.”

Evan told Meemaw he’d see her at Christmas. She didn’t agree or disagree.

A month later, she swallowed a glass of bleach (thankfully, watered down). Her system rejected it, but the burns on her esophagus were nearly second-degree. Evan forced a promise out of her that she wouldn’t try it again, a promise that Meemaw technically kept, but only because her methods had changed. Once she was up and around again, she cracked herself across the head with a bottle of RoughStock Whiskey. She’d been trying to give herself a concussion, she’d explained when she finally called (a week and a half after she’d gotten home from the hospital).

The hospital.

Evan hung up. It was 9:14pm in Bozeman. He found the number for Deaconess Hospital and gave them Meemaw’s name. The operator said she’d transfer him to a nurse. They’d brought her in at 6pm. Meemaw had jumped from the third-story roof aiming to land on the fence, but had only made it as far as the roof that covered the back porch. She was awake, but she’d broken her left arm, and her left shoulder had a hairline fracture. She’d severed the nerves between her neck and right collarbone, and her right arm was a series of sprains. The damage in her left eye was definitely permanent. The rest could heal, given time. The doctors suggested an overnight stay for the purposes of observation, but Mina was insisting on going home. She was, the nurse said, mighty stubborn. Evan was relieved—by all accounts and measures, Meemaw was still Meemaw.

They planned to give her a packet of exercises to help reduce the stress of her injuries, as well as a pamphlet on how to maintain mental fitness going forward. The nurse offered to mail Evan the pamphlet written for family members, but he danced around saying no so long the nurse said they’d send both home. She’d made the decision for him: he’d fly to Bozeman that night.

*

Evan told Montana, “I’ve got to go home.”

Her laptop threw blue light across her face. She pulled out her left earbud. “What?”

“I’ve got to go home to Bozeman, I said. Meemaw’s in the hospital.”

Montana’s face weighed pity against disappointment. “Again? You think she’d catch a break.”

“Well, her arm’s broken. And her shoulder. Though I guess that’s not what you meant.”

“Obviously.”

“Not obviously. Sorry I interrupted your show.”

“Evan, be fair. I feel bad for her is all.”

“Forget it. We can fight when I get back.” Evan went to the bedroom and threw shirts in a backpack. Montana followed and watched him.

“Pack something warmer. It’s January.” He ignored her and packed some socks. “Fine. I’ll do myself.” She pulled a duffel bag from the closet and stuffed it with scarves and sweaters. Her own.

“What’re you doing?” he said.

“Going with you. And before you start, I don’t want to wait until you’re back, so I think we should go ahead and have the fight now. If you want, I can skip straight to the apology. I’m honestly sorry. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m an asshole and you can punch me if you want. But only in the arm.” Montana offered her bicep. “And only once. And don’t use your knuckles.”

“I don’t want to punch you.”

“Is that a yes?”

“I just said no. Ease off.”

“Not that. I meant the trip. Montana in Montana.”

Evan dropped his bag. He gripped her hands in his fists and tried to swallow his anger. It took effort but not much time. With all Meemaw’s stunts, he was used to it. And it made a sort of sense—Montana in Montana. Written in his head: x in x.

*

Evan spent the hours between O’Hare and Bozeman coding on an airline napkin, trying to figure out his dwindling chain of emotional stability. Put plainly, the two people he’d always relied on were either dead or dying, so, by technicality, neither was particularly stable or reliable. But coding always starts with the basics, which often means stating the obvious, so he’d have to include them if he had any hope of finding a suitable replacement.

He started with HTML because it let him order his variables. If one went down, the code would offer the next available option. And if everything failed, there was always the default: Evan himself. But just like a website whose default font family is never ideal, Evan coded with the aim of avoiding the default.

<meta name=“EVAN” content=“LIFE; user-changeable=NO”>

<body class=“home page-id-BOZEMAN”>

{ family: “MOM”, “MEEMAW;” }

Already, the family field was problematic. Whoever came first overrode who came second. Therefore, by dint of her death, Annette couldn’t take the first position. In fact, including Annette led to all sorts of inefficiencies. Redolent, outdated, overworked code: Evan’s emotional hardwiring would always have to process Annette. And although that would’ve been a more honest code, his entire system would run faster and cleaner (less likely to malfunction or jam) if he stripped the line of all obsolete variables. Take two:

<meta name=“EVAN” content=“LIFE; user-changeable=NO”>

<body class=“home page-id-BOZEMAN”>

{ family: “MEEMAW;” }

Better, but Meemaw’s only stable aspect was her need to self-destruct. As variables went, it would’ve been a plus for any other code, since she was (and was likely to remain) consistent on that front. But if she’d had her druthers, Evan would have no family in Bozeman at all, which left him with only one replacement.

In an identical hierarchy in a different town, Montana took Meemaw’s place.

<meta name=“EVAN” content=“LIFE2; user-changeable=YES”>

<body class=“home page-id-GLENVIEW”>

{ family: “MONTANA;” }

But that balance only worked if Montana and Meemaw stayed in separate body classes. With them both in Bozeman, Evan had to choose who to put first. Normally, he would’ve bet ones to zeroes that Montana would be more stable—since Meemaw would keep pursuing The End till she reached its shrouded shores—but with Montana meeting Meemaw for the first time, and being so far from home, the odds of Montana failing or crashing weren’t just likely; they were foolproof. In fact, it wouldn’t be out of the question (or even all that shocking) if, after failing, Montana turned tail and ran full speed back to Glenview, throwing the emotional stability in Glenview’s body class completely out of whack, and making the question of overhauling Evan’s support system more or less rhetorical.

Montana was watching Homecoming on the plane. The Amish teens were drinking grain alcohol and lighting bushes on fire, then diving through them and running off in flames. She nudged Evan and pointed to the screen: “One of them is bound to explode.”

Evan drew a line through Montana’s name in both classes, and wondered how the towns themselves would fare in terms of providing support. Nix the families. Just him alone, coding himself into a hall of mirrors.

But one deserted city was as (un)stable as another, and both families were bound to leave traces. Errors and glitches. Remnants of reference. His memory couldn’t be cleaned. As soon as Meemaw reached The End and made Bozeman a proper ghost town (Population: 2, Meemaw and Annette, maybe more if he counted his aunts), just thinking about going home would kick off a series of malfunctions in Evan, and one of these days, those glitches would set Montana off and send her packing, and Glenview would prove itself equally capable of hosting a troublesome haunt.

*

Evan and his girl showed up the morning after Mina had shuffled off the roof. Mina had never seen the girl. Not even a picture. Annette had said they weren’t quite a thing. Or they were, but they weren’t. Bottom line was this girl and Evan were something but not the thing. But, listening to them squabble over where they’d put their bags, and when they’d be getting up, and which one of them’d have to sleep facing the wall, Mina saw they were something, all right. She offered to fix them some lunch, get a little food in them besides plane grub, and they nodded like she’d just used magic to guess their names: Evan, who hadn’t been back since Annette’s funeral, and Montana, his squirrely-haired girl with her Eskimo coat and her pants that looked like a pair of nylons. Mina told Evan to take the bags upstairs and put them under the bed in the guestroom, and she scolded them both to take off their shoes: The rug you’re on’s an antique. They both took wide steps off the carpet and stood on the runner in the hall. Evan used his feet to shove off his shoes. Montana stepped out of her boots, then started after Evan up the stairs. Mina called her back. She brandished her bandaged arm, said she’d need some help in the kitchen. The girl’s eyes were triumphant. Her two specialties in life were apparently sandwiches and TV.

*

Montana faced the notorious Mina Blake, her eyes racing to contain every bandage, cast, and stitch. Her right side was deflated, her skin a bulky drape over a jagged range of maladjusted angles; her shoulder ran full speed at her neck; her elbow disagreed with her wrist; her foot retreated toward her ankle; her knee looked like it’d gone missing. And her left side—arm in a sling, shoulder in plaster, cheek cloudy with gauze—Mina’s body was more or less a swaddled relic. What Mina lacked in strength though, she made up for in mystery. Montana wondered what she’d broken, longed to see the break, where and how her body chose to mend. She wanted to unravel Mina, reveal her secret choices—how she’d decided on the roof, why she’d chosen whiskey, what had made her water down the bleach?

But first, Montana had to make a sandwich.

“My usuals are BLTs, grilled cheese with ham, and egg salad with dill, but I can also do a Reuben, a turkey club, an egg-cheese scramble, a pita pocket, a Chicago dog knockoff, a meatball sub, and a vegetable special, the special part being that it’s more or less a salad on two slices of rye.”

“Which one do you want?”

“That all depends on what you have on hand.”

Ice cube trays, baking soda, plates shaped like livestock. Mina’s freezer, refrigerator, and cabinets were exercises in surrender. A game show trope ran through Montana’s mind—Choose a door and win what’s inside. Door number 1: the bleach. Door number 2: the bottle. Door number 3: the swan song/dive. Would a fourth door hold starvation? And what if the game was rigged? What if every door hid the exact same prize? Mina’s blue-white hair on Mina’s blue-white head: starving, silent, stubborn, still, and sure.

Each door Montana opened whispered shut, a hollow thud.

Evan was there when she turned around. “What’s for lunch?”

Montana looked to Mina, whose mouth went slant.

“We’re short some ingredients,” Montana said. “Why don’t we hit a supermarket and stock up for the next few days?”

*

Mina sat in the room with the good furniture. Five cigarettes burned at her feet. She’d set them smoking on a plate that was shaped like a sheep or a dog. A sheep, she decided. The cigarettes helped: the ash looked like burning wool. She inhaled their secondhand. She suppressed coughs. Tears coated her face like glue. She’d never been a smoker. Her father had kept a pipe before she was born. Her husband had chewed tobacco. Her youngest put away a pack a day at least. Smoking had always seemed a damn fool occupation. But then, so had suicide. Back when life had been a race Mina assumed she’d finish. Back before she lost her parents to age, and Phil to the drink, and Carol (her eldest) to diabetes. Before Shirley (her youngest) died in a fire she may have purposely started. Before Mina developed melanoma on her neck and, later, on her face. Before they carved it in sections from the back of her hairline, making her neck a sagging sendup of the moon. Before they sliced it away from the edge of her nose, taking a good bit of the bridge along with it. Before she rolled three times and landed, wheels up, in her car in the slanted, pouring rain: the sole survivor of a four-car collision with a semi out on 90 East. Before the paramedics tried to check her for rigor mortis and she asked them to leave her alone. Before the ER staff asked who to call, and she had to force herself to say Annette instead of Phil. Before they told her she’d need titanium rods in her spine to be able to walk. Before she heard voices in the ER, behind the curtain between the beds, the curtain that kept her from seeing a patient who’d been brought in for a nosebleed—a hole in his face he’d gotten from a last-minute, dolt second-guessing: a bullet that tore up his nostril as soon as he took the revolver out of his mouth. Before Mina heard the doctors explain the likelihood that they could save his face. Before he responded he didn’t want his face saved, that he’d been trying to find a way out of it. Before all that, but after the patient had been carted off for stitches or counsel. And Annette said, Probably not the exit he meant to make. And Mina’s response came hard and dry: Emergency exits never are.

*

Evan and Montana found Meemaw in the front room, a pile of cigarettes burning in her lap. She was in the process of shakily lighting two more. “As soon as I get these,” her flame flickered, “I’ll light some for you.”

Evan rushed at her, all palms and wrists. “Meemaw, what’re you doing?”

She held up the hand with the cigarettes and waved it like a bored sports fan with a pennant. “I decided to take up a hobby.”

“Smoking’s not a hobby.”

“Smoking’s not my hobby. Death’s my hobby.”

Montana held up a hand. Meemaw high-fived her.

“Montana. Homecoming,” Evan said.

“On it.”

Meemaw called after her as Montana left the room, “Montana. Shoes.”

“On it!”

“Meemaw, you can’t just decide you want to die, then go off and do it. You’re not even doing it right.”

Meemaw took a deep breath and exhaled with a cough. “Thanks for noticing.”

Evan took the cigarettes from her hand and put them out on the sheep plate. “I meant you keep doing it and not telling me till after you’re done. You’re supposed to leave a note or tell me in advance.”

“Notes are impersonal. And I tried to call. The day before you got here. You weren’t in.”

Regret clogged Evan’s features. “What would you’ve said?”

“Don’t ask that now.”

“Meemaw, I don’t know what else to do. You told me not to come back. Point blank. Said you didn’t want to see me.”

“But you came back anyway.”

“Yeah, I did. So, at least tell me what I can do now that I’m here.”

“You could ask how to make it up to me.”

“I promise. Whatever it is. It’s yours. Just tell me and I’ll take care of it.”

*

Evan had Annette’s nose. Wide and freckled. Her cheeks too. Red and round. Buoyant on her. Fat on him. He had her limp black hair and her average neck and her mismatched yellow teeth. He was her but not her. There was a difference: he hadn’t inherited her eyes. Annette’s smile belonged to a simpleton. Her eyes hid a birdbrain. And while Evan was no big mystery—just a boy making his way—his eyes were tied to a knotted mind. But if Mina explained it just right, he would understand her problem. And if he understood, she knew she could get him to give her a hand. So she tried to say it without saying it. She tried to use his words. He’d said, whatever she wanted. She said she wanted his help. She explained she didn’t care how he did it, so long as it was fast. So long as he got it done and did it right the first time.

*

Montana hadn’t gotten as far as Homecoming. She’d gone upstairs to find her laptop, and got sidetracked by a pamphlet on mental health. Of particular interest: the passage that laid out the difference between assisted suicide—legal in Bozeman—and regular suicide—not exactly against the law, but also not legally do-able. Her interest aside, the tone of the passage irked Montana. Aimed at the family members of someone who survived a recent suicide attempt, disappointment was key and prevention was paramount, especially for patients who were healthy. Like suicide was a consolation prize reserved for the terminally ill. Like being terminally ill was a prize in itself. Like death could only be sought out during advanced stages of dying. Like dying wasn’t something everybody did all day long. There was enough guilt and moral blame to make a rope to hang yourself with, a line of brass tacks Montana resented on Mina’s destructive behalf. She wanted to write all over the pamphlet, fuck a bunch of this, but she didn’t have a pen or know where to find one.

Looking around the guestroom, she saw no pens. No desk. Just a full-sized bed, a hope chest, a rocking chair, and photos scattered above the bed: Evan’s aunts, Carol and Shirley—one tiny, the other tall—pretending to ride a two-seated bicycle; Evan’s grandfather—Mina’s husband, Phil—holding a baby Annette; Annette at high school graduation, face split by a dopey smile; Mina watching Annette read to Evan, who was maybe four years old; and the house when they’d first moved in, no fence, nothing yet to protect, a photo taken a few years before Carol was born. The photos watched over the bed, ghosts peering down in propriety. Sex in that room would’ve been an exhibit. Obviously, there could be no noise. No creaking from the mattress. No yelling. Absolutely no naming of names. But they’d hear each other’s saliva when they kissed. They would hear the entrance and exit. They would hear the sounds of thrashing skin and hair. And the photos would hear it too, watching and listening as if they’d paid admission.

Montana heard Evan on the stairs. “Perfect timing,” she said. “Let me tell you about this room’s whacked-out erotica potential—”

Evan didn’t laugh. His face was wet and swollen. He looked like he’d been fighting. Fighting or running. Failing at both. He walked past her but didn’t sit down, just stood in place, shuffling foot to foot. His body was a sideways nod.

“I told Meemaw— Just now, I said— I felt bad for missing her call. I said I’d make it up to her. I’d do whatever she wanted. I promised. I said it. I said I’d help. I had no idea—” Evan saw the pamphlet in Montana’s hand, and his laugh came on like a stutter.

The one thing Mina would ask for.

“She wants you to help. To assist.”

Evan stopped moving. “And I can’t tell her no. If I do, I can’t stay. But if I leave, as soon as I go, she’ll try again. She’s already— Already planning— That’s what this is. Another attempt.” Evan threw his fist at his shoulder, hard and fast. Pulled back, and again. Shoveling like he meant to bury it. Montana held his hands.

“Hey,” she said. “Hey. Come on. Ease up.”

He stopped and the words came again. “If I agree— I’d have to do it. I’d have to really do it. Full-on. The End. And I can’t. I can’t. Even if I tried— I can’t. It’s like— Boolean. Doing one thing to negate some other thing. Helping her but not helping. Stay and help her and get a real goodbye but turn her into nothing.”

“You have to help her.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“A thousand reasons.”

“Earth to Captain Vague. Name one.”

“It’s commonly known as murder.”

“Okay, but you know who doesn’t care? Mina. And you know whose opinion matters in this situation more than the grand state of Montana’s? Mina’s.” Montana tossed the pamphlet into the wastebasket near the bed.

“I would get arrested, okay? Arrested for killing a 73-year-old.”

“A 73-year-old with a history of attempted suicide. I’m not saying drown her or strangle her to death. Just make it easier for her to kill herself. If you don’t help, she’s just going to hurt herself trying to do it again.”

“That’s my point. This either-or. It’s the worst binary in the history of code. And worse than that is I’ve got no idea how to start to write it.”

“Yes, you do. She’s got it more than half written. You just write the rest. Easy out.”

“That’s an easy out?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No. I don’t. This isn’t reality TV. You watch that show and think giving up’s the only way to live. You think death’s a legitimate life goal. Well, it’s not, and anybody who thinks it is, is a fucking idiot.”

“I’m sorry—I’m not fluent in Asshole—did you just call your grandmother an idiot? Because I’m not the only one who thinks death is a decent series finale. You need to stop thinking about suicide as the worst thing Mina’s ever done and start trying to see it the way she does: something she’s rightfully earned.”

*

Evan’s relationship with Montana had started as a sort of game. They’d fallen together at a party right after Annette’s diagnosis—right before he’d learn his limits for chasing the uncertain, back when it seemed like all he knew was that he couldn’t make good. He couldn’t code himself to Bozeman, couldn’t write Annette well, couldn’t identify a single variable that yielded steady ground. So he leapt toward even shakier footing. If things refused to get better, he’d at least go down soaring. He’d steer into trouble head-on.

When Evan reached the party, the house was already full. Montana was holding two drinks and dancing alone by the bathroom. As he tried to pass her, she held out an arm. She said, “Get in line.” He took the drink from her nearest hand, drained it, and tapped the other, nodded for her to finish it. She said she couldn’t. “Tank’s full.” Once the bathroom was free, she said, “Hold my drink?” A minute later, it was gone. A flush later, she didn’t respond (didn’t even pause), but yanked him into the bathroom where they memorized each other’s bodies by hand. “Aren’t you a thrill?” she’d said. He liked her right away, and somehow even more once he learned her name. It became a joke between them: he’d always have a place in Montana. In that way, she returned part of Evan to himself. And other parts too. Parts he had no language for: the hesitance he felt after The Deserter took off, the risk he’d taken in moving to Glenview, the odds that Annette’s doctors were atmospherically off-base in figuring out what she needed.

Uncertainty. Montana reminded Evan he could still enjoy the uncertain.

That first night, they’d exchanged phones instead of numbers. When Evan wanted her, he simply called himself. Thinking of her became an extension of memory, like reciting an erased line of his intrinsic code. She was a glitch of the best sort: one that kept him guessing. She reminded him of life outside formula and reference, the operation he’d been missing since he left home.

He wondered if Montana would answer if Annette called, if she’d talk to the only other person he considered equal parts error and function. He could hear Annette trying to say the right things: You met at a party? That sounds real nice. And he made sure you got home okay? Well, I want to be sure I raised a good boy. Evan’s no deserter.

But Evan later learned Montana followed the same rules he’d set for himself—she never answered his phone unless she recognized the number, unless she saw her own information there. It was the easiest phone interaction he’d ever had (they never said hello or goodbye). “I’m going to a party,” one of them would say. “Meet me there.” And then they’d hang up. It was as if they required an audience to function. Or a game, like the phones, which would’ve gone on as long as they were willing to play. But Evan rewrote the rules, cracking her passcode to find the phone’s number—he wanted to memorize it. Not to intrude, not to call her (unless she asked him to herself). But as a gesture: an outdated practice he felt inspired to undertake. He wanted to give her a part of himself, a piece of his memory. He wanted her code mixed with his. He wanted her in him somehow. But Montana never knew because he asked for her number anyway—often afraid of asking too much, he always asked too little.

So, when Montana offered to help him help Meemaw, he said he couldn’t ask her to do that. But Montana wouldn’t take no for an answer, said if push came to shove, and he decided not to help Mina at all, then Montana would step in and do it for him.

Evan said no—they’d do it together. He owed that to Annette. She’d always thought Evan could do anything and went out of her way to tell him so. Anything he set his mind to—that was all it took. He wished like hell she’d never bothered. He’d gladly have been incompetent if that meant he could tell Meemaw or Montana, “No.”

*

Montana, Mina, and Evan sat in the room with the good furniture. Cigarettes burned like incense, arranged on livestock plates. Seven on a rooster-shaped dish. Ten on a pig. Fourteen on a plate shaped like a goose. Montana called their meeting Operation End: What Mina Wants Mina Gets. Mina thought of Gwen Verdon. Montana said the options were pills, guns, and carbon monoxide poisoning. Was carbon monoxide fast, Evan wanted to know. Montana shrugged and told him she’d never tried it. He bet her twenty dollars that it was slow. Montana looked it up: fifteen minutes. Mina thought that seemed like a while. Evan told Montana to pay up. Montana told Evan he could eat it. Mina wasn’t sure about guns. Evan said they were fast at least. Mina told him she’d never shot one. She was sure she would do it wrong. Montana said guns were a dead giveaway. Unless she already owned them, buying one for her would seem like awful convenient timing. The list was down to pills. They ruled out painkillers and anything prescribed. Montana said why not cyanide. Evan asked if cyanide was easy to get. If not, it’s the way of the gun. And if so, would it be painful? Montana turned to Mina and told her no offense, but Mina had been in pain since the roof. Mina told Montana she wasn’t offended by the truth. Evan said, stop—he didn’t want to hurt Mina further. Montana said there was no such thing as a totally painless death. Mina was tired of pussyfooting around. She said let it be an accident. Something nobody had to buy. Something that looked like it just one day up and happened. Montana said, the car. Evan said, he’d already said fifteen minutes was too long. Montana said, Mina’s garden is right next to the driveway. She could be gardening and they could accidentally hit her. Evan said no one gardens in the snow. Montana said that’s why it’s an accident. No one would expect her to be there. Mina said Let’s pick a day to do it. Montana said Saturday. Evan said Sunday. Mina said they could do both. Just before sunrise. A garden party. An early winter, Sunday morning send-off.

*

Montana reached across the table and took a drag off a cigarette that had been resting on the edge of a plate shaped like a pig. Evan glared at her. “What? She doesn’t need them anymore.”

Mina said, “She’s right.”

Evan said, “She didn’t need them before.”

Montana mouthed the word Sorry and stabbed the cigarette out. Among the others, the unlit cigarette looked dead, as if the others had ignored it to death. Ashes to ashes in ashes. Montana looked from Evan to Mina. He was trying to gather the plates, and she was telling him to let them be. Montana wanted to tell a joke—something to get their minds off Sunday morning—but all she could think of were cars and accidents and bones buried in gardens.

“Hey,” Mina said, “what say we have those sandwiches?”

“I’m not hungry,” Evan told her.

“Like hell you’re not. Make him one with ham and cheese. I’ll have mine grilled, no ham.”

Montana ran to the kitchen, almost giddy with relief over having a task she knew she could accomplish. There was no enormous responsibility in choosing to eat a sandwich, or when to make it, or how to fill the bread. The biggest decision in sandwich-making was deciding which sandwich to have. The odds of fucking it up were astoundingly low. And even if it fell apart—during assembly or during the meal—a sandwich could always be put back together. It could even be better because it fell apart. Because in the end, a sandwich was always itself: a thing to be eaten. It was never a thing to be saved. It never changed depending on who was looking at it. It was the same to the person who ate it as the person who made it. And no matter what happened, there would never be a time when a sandwich would be considered a crime.

Mina’s grilled cheese was burning. Montana flipped it onto a plate. She’d never overcooked a sandwich in her life. But there was Mina’s: one side deeply charred, the other undercooked but on its way.

*

Evan put his head in the kitchen. “Everything okay? Between the cigarettes and the food, it smells like you’re aiming to test the smoke alarm.”

Montana stood at the stove, making a sandwich for Meemaw. She pointed to the first. “I’ve lost my touch.” A smile sat heavy on her mouth. “I don’t think I can do this.” Evan thought she was kidding until he saw her turn the sandwich in the pan. (Burnt again.)

“You mean the sandwich, right?”

“Yeah—the sandwich.”

“Want me to take over?”

Montana looked straight at the wall. “No.” She tossed the second sandwich against the ruined first. “Butter me two slices of bread though, just on one side each.” He did and she put it in the pan with a loud, enduring hiss.

He started on the second. “I think we should all go out before Sunday.”

Montana layered cheese on the bread in the pan, then capped it with the second buttered slice. “Go out where?” She flipped the sandwich. The toast was gold. She didn’t look relieved.

“Anywhere.” Evan felt pent up. He wanted them to do more than decide how and when Meemaw was going to go. They had forty hours to fill between the scheduling and execution. Executing an execution. On a different day, he might’ve laughed.

Montana said, “Remember Mina can’t move all that well.”

“We’ll help her,” Evan said. “It’s Help Out Meemaw Week.”

“You should definitely call it that when you tell her we’re going out.” Montana flipped the sandwich again. Both sides were crisp and even. “Finally.” She plated the sandwich. She turned off the burner. She tossed the pan in the sink. It landed with a crash. A dull, unsatisfying echo.

*

Mina had to hand it to her: the girl could make a sandwich. Montana thanked her, but only scraped her sandwich with a knife. Squared egg salad into the bread like cement on a fresh headstone. Evan hadn’t touched his food. He was too busy making a speech. Something about going driving, the three of them. Or downtown. Or anywhere, really. Wherever Mina wanted. What’s important was the going. And the air. They could all use some air, Evan said. It’d help them feel a little better. So, Mina asked Evan if he’d ever told Montana about Annette’s dog, Yip. Playful thing. Loud as hell. Would bark you deaf if you let him. The day they brought him home was Annette’s eleventh birthday. And she paraded up and down the street, telling everybody, This here’s Yip. Till the whole damn neighborhood shook his hand. And Annette’s eyes went full and leaky like flimsy water balloons. They thought she was happy. But the next morning, she got up with a rash. Red all over her face and hands. Then her tongue went thick. She couldn’t talk, could barely swallow. They took her to the doctor. Sure enough, she was allergic. Mina said Yip had to go. But the shelter couldn’t take him back. Not right away. So they spent three days trying to fill the hours like Yip had just retired. They drove him around, thinking he could stick his face out the window. But Yip sat in the back like he’d gone to a funeral and was waiting to get back home. And when they got back, he didn’t bark. Didn’t whine. Didn’t cry. Wouldn’t play. Just sat in the yard, avoided the house, and kept his distance from Annette. She said, He knows. Animals know things. They know without being told. Little-girl logic kicking in. But Mina didn’t tell her no. The things animals know, humans come to learn. And old ladies learn more, being old. Mina learned from Yip. She didn’t want a joyride and she didn’t want fresh air. She wanted her cigarettes. She wanted her house. That’s where her life had happened. And when The End came, it could damn well come and meet her where she lived.

*

Montana tried to lighten the room’s burden. “Hey, let’s show Mina Homecoming!”

“Hey, let’s not and say we did!”

“How about we let her decide? Mina, do you like documentaries?”

“That is not a documentary.”

“Does it or does it not follow an event as the event unfolds, unscripted?” Montana held a hand to her ear. “I’m sorry, what? No response for that one?” Montana dropped her hand. “Mina? Documentaries?”

Evan stepped between them. “Two days. She has two days left. And you want her to spend it on TV. Are you bucking for Most Casually Selfish or—”

“Evan,” Mina said, “I like TV.”

“Meemaw, that show is awful. And besides that, she’s already seen it.”

Mina said, “All right. What should we do instead?”

“Can’t we just sit around and talk?”

“Sure. What about?”

“I don’t know. We could talk about Mom.” Mina nodded, but didn’t say anything. “Or something else if you want.”

“Talking’s all the same now. And grief’s not much different than TV. A thing you’ve thought about over and over. A show you’ve seen a dozen times. TV’s like a friendly ghost. You decide when your house gets haunted.”

Montana realized then that she loved Mina Blake.

“You know what documentary I like?” Mina said. “That one from a few years back about the shepherds who took their sheep across the Absarokas.”

Montana said, “In Spain?”

“No—the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains. They’re maybe 50 miles from here.” Evan lay on the couch and put a pillow on his face. “The movie shows the shepherds taking the sheep over the land, and it’s a sight because most shepherds won’t take them that way anymore. You see them figuring out what they have to give up just to get by, dealing with it being their decision to go in the first place. It’s really something.”

Montana’s voice was a promise and a half: “You’re going to love Homecoming.”

From beneath the pillow, Evan said, “She’s lying.”

Mina shushed him and Montana fired up the second season.

“Shouldn’t we start at the beginning?”

“No, the first season’s terrible. And the cast changes every year. Like The Real World, only Amish. So it’s better to watch the other seasons first, then go back to the first season, so you can experience it in a so-bad-it’s-almost-sort-of-good kind of way.”

Evan fell asleep. Drifting back to pull the pillow off his face, he heard Montana. She hadn’t even paused for air. “—one of the best scenes in the series. The kids shoot up in their eyes. They shot drugs between their toes before, which the announcer says is so the tracks don’t show, but the eyeball thing is the worst thing they’ve done so far. It’s so personal. And the way the camera’s in there, you can see them trying not to look.”

“At the camera or the needle?”

“Probably both.”

“How’s that any better? Why’s it better than injecting their feet?”

“Excellent questions. It has to do with why they start. Eli’s Sarah went home to get baptized and—”

“Why do they call her Eli’s Sarah?”

“To tell her apart from Conrad’s Sarah.”

“Well, why do they call her Conrad’s Sarah?”

“It has to do with their father’s names. I’d be Bill’s Montana.”

“I’d be Wilford’s Mina.”

“That is so not fair.”

“What?”

“Your name sounds ten times more Amish than mine.”

*

The evening ended with Evan still asleep on the couch. Montana watched him sleep while Mina watched the credits.

“He always sleeps with his mouth open,” Montana said. “I call it his manhole.”

“I bet we could throw playing cards in there and he wouldn’t wake up.”

“Do you have playing cards?”

“Course I do. What kind of old lady do you think I am?”

“The kind who told me to make a sandwich with no ingredients.”

“No use in keeping food around when it’s only going to rot.”

“So what do you eat?”

“I walk to the corner store for a grilled cheese on Sundays.”

“What about the rest of the week?”

Mina shrugged, not out of ignorance. “I get too bored to eat.”

“So you starve yourself for fun?”

“No. I drink bleach for fun.”

“Watered down.”

“Had to. The smell burned my nose.”

A series of narrated clips ran behind Montana’s eyes: Ingredients gathered, Mina measures out the dose. [Close-up of a bottle of Clorox. Cut to: The spout, pouring. Cut to: A mug filled just-to with bleach.] She brings it to her lips—too strong. [One long take: Mina holds her nose. Her eyes absorb the shock, lashes damp like haystacks in a downpour.] She dilutes the bleach. [A tight shot from over Mina’s shoulder, at the sink adding water to the mug, doctoring her doctoring.] Too much? Too little? [Mina turns off the faucet.] Enough. [A long shot: she drinks.] The shot administered, she waits. [Close-up: Her mouth. Withdrawn. Shivering. Cut to: commercial.]

Montana said, “But you drank it anyway.”

“I was hoping it’d do the trick. But I woke up feeling like I ate a sunburn.”

Montana squinted at Mina’s image. “I just realized I’m picturing you drinking it in bandages. I don’t know what you look like when you’re—not like this.”

“I look just like I do now, only older.” She laughed, a startling sound, wheezy and severe.

“You look young in the photo above the bed in the guestroom.”

“Well, sure. It was a lifetime ago.”

“Can I ask about those photos?”

“Why ask to ask? You don’t need permission.”

“Why’s there a picture of the house?”

“Cause I can’t see it from inside.”

“But that’s not how it looks now. It’s a different house.”

“I’m not following. What’s your question?”

“I guess what I’m trying to say is… why aren’t there any new photos?”

“Oh, I got plenty of new ones. Let me fetch the camera.”

Mina limped to the hutch off the kitchen and brought back a digital camera.

“Ooh,” Montana said. “I remember those.”

“What do you mean, remember? This thing’s brand new.”

“No, I meant— It’s been a little while. Since phones have cameras now.”

Mina gave Montana the camera and a look that ended the discussion. Montana thumbed through the picture index, grateful to have to look away.

The house in summer. A hammock. Two glasses, one empty, the other full of tea. The window leading to the roof. A woman wearing a sheet like a cape—she looked shocked to see the camera. Her face like a kid’s. “That’s Annette, about a year ago.” The high school student was there, but gone. Her cheeks had lost their lift. And under each eye, a shallow trench. Her smile looked hollowed out. Poor Annette. Montana handed the camera back to Mina, who said, “There’s one of Evan too. On his last visit before…”

“Are there any of you?”

“Probably. Annette was a regular shutterbug toward the end. Acting like she could take them with her.” Mina coughed up a laugh. “But now I’ve got proof.”

“Of what?”

“Where I’m headed. Empty rooms. Seeing what she saw.”

Montana found a picture of Mina squatting, pulling weeds from her garden. She looked bullish and patient and steely. “Can I take a picture of you now?” Montana already had her phone out. Mina’s hands blocked her face from the camera. “I promise to get your best side.”

“No such thing.”

“Mina.” Montana put on a face that made her feel like a mom. She creased it with worry.

“Please?”

“I said no.”

“Why not?” Mina cringed, bared her teeth. “That’s perfect! Hold that sneer!” Mina’s bandaged hand went up. “I get it. You don’t want a portrait.” Montana set her arm on Mina’s shoulders. “But how about we do one together?” Holding her phone like a mirror, Montana steered it to fit them inside. Mina didn’t smile. Montana smirked then straightened her face, then scowled and snapped the photo. She tapped the viewer and shrieked with joy. “Look. We’re basically twins.” They looked like children playing at being mad. All eyebrows and frown lines and scorn.

Mina crowed. “We’re a pair.” She held the phone close to her face and squinted. “Does my eye look like that? Does it look like that all the time now?”

“Like what?”

“Like a wandering dog.”

“No. It’s just because you’re trying not to laugh.”

“Annette would’ve hated that. She always liked photos where everybody smiled.”

“Do you like it?”

“I like that it looks like us.”

“Me too. Let’s do more.” Montana set her sunglasses on Mina’s head like a tiara. She put her mouth to Mina’s cheek, held still, and took a photo. Mina’s face hid the ghost of a smile.

“Annette would’ve liked that one,” she said. “She would’ve liked you, I think.”

“Probably more than her son does sometimes.” Montana smiled and felt cruel.

They both looked at Evan, still asleep, mouth open, stunned, knocked out. There was something territorial in Mina’s eye. One-eyed Mina protecting her young.

“He cares about you. In his way.”

“I didn’t mean he doesn’t care. It’s just—” Montana closed her hand around nothing. She was afraid to let go. “Sometimes, I get the feeling he wants me to end things so he won’t have to. Like, part of me thinks he invited me here just to scare me away.” Mina turned her head like she meant to do the scaring. “I’m not scared,” Montana said. “I’m sticking around.”

“Good. He needs you.”

“Try telling him that.”

“Without you, we’d be pretending it was Old Home Week tomorrow.”

“That was your doing, actually. And we can do whatever you want tomorrow.”

“Is that right?”

“Cross my heart.”

Mina smiled at Montana like a double agent initiating a new recruit, her territorial look replaced with a scheme. “How do you feel about heights?”

*

Thirty hours left. Evan couldn’t sleep. But he lay in the guestroom and pretended. At first, he’d watched the rain change to snow. Then he felt Montana shudder. Cold vs. dreaming. Maybe both. She was a stranger to Bozeman winters. Glenview picked one thing and stayed there. Bozeman was a serial vacillator (by morning, it’d be back to rain), but he pulled the blanket to Montana’s chin and smoothed her untamed hair. Her head moved forward, leaning to his hand, though there was a shiver in it. Still, a victory, small or pyrrhic (apparently, the theme of the day). He savored it anyway. It might’ve been the last victory for a while.

The house was harder for Evan at night. Harder to forget its past. Back when Mina was only Meemaw, and the hardest thing to do was deciding when to visit. Evan couldn’t remember when he’d learned her real name, but he knew it was the first detail about his family he’d wished no one had told him. Like how every night, before dinner, Phil drank half a bottle of whiskey, then downed the other half before bed. Or how he built the fence to keep his daughters from ever going out. Or how, at 12, Aunt Carol snuck a boy in, and how Phil nearly killed him. Or how Meemaw had to force Phil to cover the boy’s hospital bills. Or how Aunt Carol never got married and blamed her father for it. Or how Aunt Shirley’s accidental death wasn’t an accident. Or how Annette blamed herself for the rest of her life. Or how Evan’s parents had lived in the house before Evan was born. How they sat out back and drank and sang. How they’d had a genuinely happy handful of years there for a while. It was easier for Evan to think of them always on the outs. Living apart. Mom disappointed. It was easier to forgive The Deserter for deserting them if he’d never wanted to stay. Forgiving and forgetting was easier with the uncomplicated worst. Simple variables. Consistency had never let him down.

Twenty-nine hours.

In twenty-nine hours, they’d help Meemaw to death. He was past wondering how they got here. Instead, he wondered how Meemaw had survived. Her previous attempts reminded Evan of inoperative kill() functions. There was some part of her makeup, some part of her wiring, that simply wouldn’t quit. He imagined the error codes her body kicked out each time kill(Meemaw) had failed.

EPERM

The process does not have permission to kill the receiving Meemaw.

ESRCH

The process specified by the Meemaw parameter cannot be located.

EINVAL

The value of quitting Meemaw is an incorrect or unsupported signal.

Evan found unsuccessful functions depressing by nature, but he was worried about kill(Meemaw)’s recurring failure. The only fix he could devise was switching out the variable, swapping (Meemaw) out in exchange for (whatever kept Meemaw alive). But that meant pinning down an exact element to blame. That meant the thing that kept her from dying was the same thing every time. But what if that element was also the thing that had her gunning for The End? Meemaw was a survivor. She’d outlived her husband, her children, two cases of skin cancer, and an otherwise fatal car wreck. Whatever kept her going (her heart, her size, her instinct, her temper), it had to be some part of her will. But from where Evan sat, her will was the thing that pushed Meemaw to self-destruct. That and the effort of survival itself. He’d heard her talk about her dead, not just the people, but the town. The Bozeman of her childhood, the Bozeman of her marriage, the Bozeman of her stark and steady losses. For Meemaw, Bozeman was Bozemen, and now for Evan too, who resented its latest version: without Annette. If Annette were still alive, Meemaw’s will wouldn’t be a problem.

But as it was, Annette was gone. Meemaw’s will couldn’t be reversed. Given the choice, Evan knew he’d opt to try a recode: rewrite her resolve, remove her death drive, then reset and see how she fared. Admittedly though, he felt fortunate he didn’t have the choice—not because he was ill prepared or undertrained (he’d code it well), but because it meant destroying the strongest part Meemaw had left. Rewriting her hellbent desire meant snuffing out her one remaining vital light.

*

“You know, the view is kind of nice from up here.”

The view was the yard. Half of Mina’s garden, the hammock, the trees. And beyond them—around them—the fence. The distance between the roof and the fence was maybe half a swimming pool. Montana envisioned Mina’s body between the roof and the fence. Her bandages flapping in slow motion. Her arc, nearly complete. She lands, settles, no crash, no shout, squarely on the fence. The picket is clean except where the wood meets Mina’s skin. Through her back and her front, a pair of red rings glowed like a fire on TV, like the lit end of the cigarette Montana held out to Mina. Mina took it and the smoke sidled up to her, circling her head like a scarf, a veil of gray she tore with her cough. Montana wore a hat and coat. Mina wore her robe. They both sat on sheets of tin foil in order to not melt the snow. “That had been Annette’s trick,” Mina said. “She was up here all year long. She loved the view. Before she died, she tried to get me out here.”

“She obviously never had the pleasure of pushing you out that window.”

“Just you wait. You’re going to have to help me get me back in.”

“What? I thought you were gonna jump down.”

“I’m afraid of heights.”

“Get out of here.”

Mina shook her head. “Was then. Still am.” Mina shut her eyes and opened them. “Annette always said we should have a party. Tea and bread on the roof. I said we could have it right near the window. It’d be just as good inside. She said no. It meant more out here. Then she wanted to do it when she was ‘strong enough.’ Said if she could get well enough to climb out again, then I had to come out too.” Mina passed the cigarette back to Montana. “After what she went through, I figured I owed it to her.”

Montana pictured Mina and Annette on the roof. Not young Annette, but Dead Annette: Dead Annette floating above her square of tin foil. And Dead Mina floating at her side. Dead Mina had a picket through her torso. Dead Annette looked like the photo on Mina’s camera, only gray and grayer around her eyes. Montana saw Evan’s aunts, too. Dead Shirley with her hair on fire. Dead Carol, much like Annette, had simply gone black and white. Like a row of silent-film actors. Everyone had black shadows under her eyebrows. The ice and snow glowed white. And the aluminum they hovered over shone like puddles of silver.

Montana looked at Mina, Still-Alive Mina, and wondered about her many ghosts.

“Do you miss your other kids?” Montana asked.

“Sometimes I forget they’re gone.”

“Like dementia?”

“If only.” Mina’s laugh sounded like a squint—pinched and pained. Her eyes fluttered shut. “I meant they still feel close. Annette most of all. I don’t forget she’s gone though. I can’t forget with her. The funeral was hard. Everybody saying, Let’s all get together. Why don’t we ever get together? We really should get together. Let’s plan a get-together soon. The funeral became our get-together. Everybody chatting so nice. Then somebody started. Poor Annette. And soon, it was a flock. Poor Annette this. Poor Annette that. My Annette was never poor. She was a dope. She couldn’t spell. She had awful grooming habits. Her nails. Picture a grown woman with peanut brittle for nails. Give her terror breath and broom hair. She was a mess. A skinny little cartoon. The way they made her up for the casket. God, it looked just like her. She would’ve loved it. She would’ve asked them to do it every day. And any of them that overheard her would’ve said, Poor Annette. But she wasn’t poor. Not ever. She loved every day of her life. She even loved the day Evan’s daddy left. Didn’t love that he left, but found something good about the day. That’s what they should’ve talked about at her funeral. Instead, the whole place stank of manners. Good graces and roses. And the roses stank to high heaven. Worse than manure. Like sugar and rot. I don’t know where they came from, but everybody had one. Like they all donated a dollar to some god-awful charity. Like they all threw in to save some dying kids.” Mina’s laugh resurfaced, fuller now. “Kids. They’re always dying.”

Montana lit up like a buzzer on a quiz show. “They are. There’s this one really sad episode of Homecoming, when Conrad’s Sarah dies—”

“Conrad’s Sarah dies?”

“Shit.” Montana’s face fell. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to spoil it.” Mina shook her head. “She gets beaten up and left on a curb.”

Mina’s visible eye clouded over. The gauze over her bandaged eye crumpled in anger. “Do they show it?”

“No. It’s just the other kids finding her—after. And it’s horrible because they don’t know they’re a block away from a hospital. They don’t know about the ER. So they try to take her back home, but there isn’t enough time. On the way, she dies of internal bleeding.”

“That’s awful.”

“That’s what I said. I was in tears over it. But Evan said it wasn’t even real. He said if she had actually been assaulted, there wouldn’t have been any footage of them finding her. He said the camera crew would’ve seen the hospital, and even if they hadn’t, they would’ve called an ambulance. I told him the Amish kids wouldn’t have trusted regular medicine. We got into this huge stupid fight about it. Neither of us won.”

“Nobody ever wins that sort of fight. As long as you have the fights that matter, those are the ones that count.”

Montana felt like it had counted. She just hadn’t known how to tell Evan. And she didn’t know how to tell Mina either. How could she say death was pretty much the point? That death was the engine of change. The whole engrossing idea behind Homecoming was sticking together when things got scary—even when (especially when) that meant screwing each other up—because all they had was each other, and the alternative was to forget. Not where they came from—forgetting their roots was basically impossible—but forgetting that they weren’t alone, that they had a proper clan. That was the tradeoff. Leaving home to trudge through the fallout of their mistakes: making their way, raw and horrific, toward and away from each other.

*

Saturday night, Montana and Meemaw watched Homecoming specials. They were halfway through a tease-and-tickle, 20-minute featurette, a spot that coincided with the Fourth of July. The Amish teens were trying to swallow lit sparklers. They used the extinguished metal to brand their skin. Their faces, their eyelids, their arms and necks and wrists. Everybody got a star or stripe.

Meemaw gripped her face but didn’t look away. Montana took her hand and said, “I know.”

Evan asked, “Can you please turn that off? Or at least give it a rest?”

Montana paused the video. Meemaw, unthinking, said they could watch the rest tomorrow. No one replied. They looked at the screen, frozen between two clips. A white-tipped sparkler and a wide-mouthed laugh. Or maybe a silent gasp. The moment between pain and recognition.

Meemaw stood and stretched. “Well, see you in the morning.”

Once she left, Montana looked at Evan like he’d taken her toys away. “You’re such a killjoy.”

“Emphasis on kill.”

“Emphasis on the whole thing. You need both parts.”

She was right. But it also missed the point. The real problem was their game had grown old. Or maybe that it hadn’t grown at all. He wanted to refresh their screen. He needed to find a new part of himself, a new variable to hold her attention. He’d need her. He needed her. Long past the weekend. Even if they failed. Where was the variable that said, plainly, I love you the way you love mayhem. The way Meemaw wants out of living, that’s how I want you around. In a stupid way, a stubborn way that mixed his love with hate (a way that made him love to hate to love her), that’s how he needed Montana.

He grabbed her hand. “Let’s go downtown. You haven’t seen downtown yet.”

“You said there’s nothing downtown worth seeing.”

“I was wrong.” He pulled her up. “Come on. I’ll show you the jail. Get dressed. I’ll show you the spinning horse. It doesn’t actually spin any more because some guy climbed up and broke it, but it’s something to do. And I think we both need something to do tonight.”

As Montana pulled her boots on, Evan’s head felt full. Full and familiar. His thoughts went fizzy. He’d sounded just like Annette.

*

Montana stood under the sign announcing the Ellen Theatre. She sighed and out came a cloud, just like in cartoons. Cloudy breath was the only good thing about being out in the cold. It made life feel realer than TV. She pointed up and said to Evan, “It’s the theatre in the photo you keep on the fridge.” She tilted her head back and read the marquee. “This is going to sound weird, but it feels like I’m meeting a celebrity.”

She faced him and her ribs lurched. He didn’t want her to want this—she saw it in the way he held his mouth: lips pressed just enough to tell her he wasn’t open for business.

“No celebrities here,” he said. “The Ellen doesn’t show movies anymore. They only run live plays now.”

“That could be cool.”

“Could it? Plays make me feel like a stalker. Like I’m watching someone’s real life.”

“And we both know how you love reality TV.”

He flinched like she’d hit him. “Let’s go. I’ll show you the museum.”

Standing in front of the Gallatin History Museum, Montana asked, “This used to be a jail? It looks like a castle.”

“When I was little, I thought it was the castle at the end of Super Mario.”

“Oh my god. It looks exactly the same.”

“It’s the color of the brick.”

“And the shape and the height and the door—and the lamppost out front that looks just like the flagpole! Please tell me you dressed up as Mario for Halloween and took pictures. Please.”

“I didn’t.”

“Ugh,” she turned away in mock disgust. “You should’ve lied. I would’ve believed you.”

“I wouldn’t have had the photos.”

“You wouldn’t have needed them. I can see them in my head. Little you as Mario. Mina as the Princess.”

“Meemaw can’t be the Princess. She’s my grandmother.”

“Mina is a badass princess. Look at this picture I took of us last night.” Montana held up her phone.

“You took it last night and it’s already your locked screen?”

“You’re just mad because it’s not you. But that’s not the point. Look at her crown. Sunglasses. She’s a total princess.”

“I didn’t say she couldn’t be a princess. I said she couldn’t be my princess.”

“Fine. Then Annette can be the Princess.”

“Are you trying to make this worse?”

“Which—now that I’ve said it—makes total sense. You barely ever see the Princess, but you hear about her all the time, and she affects everything you do. And when she finally shows up, she’s gone a second later. The Princess is basically a ghost.” Montana imagined Dead-Annette floating centerstage at the Ellen. Evan runs to meet her, but an invisible barrier stops him from reaching her. “And the Princess is the one who sends the Hero on his next mission at the end. Your mom telling you at The End to save Mina. It’s basically the same situation.” Montana snapped out of her reverie to find Evan glaring at her. Angry or hurt or both. “Fuck, I’m sorry. That was— I’m sorry. Look, how about this? There is no Princess. Just you and Bowser, right? But Bowser as played by Mina. Hear me out—Bowser’s huge. And Mario’s tiny. She’s an adult and you were a kid. That makes at least a little sense, right?”

“Sure. At the end of the game, I destroy the bridge she’s standing on, and she falls to her death. The End. It’s just like a mirror, only better. I’m really glad we came downtown.”

Montana felt a pin prick her eyes. She wanted to rewind the evening, back to the part before she’d ruined what was left. She wiped her cheeks. “I wasn’t being literal.”

“I know,” he said. “I just thought we could come down here and ignore tomorrow for a while.”

“It’s off limits then? Talking about it?”

“I guess that’s too much to ask.”

“We at least have to figure out which one of us is driving in the morning—not-it.” Evan sighed at her. “What?”

“Was the offer to punch you restricted to the fight we had before we left?”

“Are you honestly being serious right now?”

“Of course not. But what if I was? Still in the arm? Still only once?”

“And you judge me for my interest in violence.”

“Because it’s stupid. The entire thing about Homecoming is that safe choices are limiting, but the only way to be safe in terms of choice is to put yourself in harm’s way.”

“That’s a pretty joyless view of it, but have it your way. I still don’t see how that makes it stupid.”

“Because everything’s a risk. Every time we choose to do one thing, we give up something else. We traded phones. We got a place together. You came with me to Bozeman.”

“But those are two different types of risk: short term and long. It’s harder to take a long-term risk because you never get to know if your time could’ve been better spent some other way. That’s what Homecoming is about. Taking that risk and learning how to get around regret. Do you regret giving me your phone?”

“No.”

“That was a short risk that turned into a long one. Do you regret moving in with me?”

“No.”

“Quick answer. I want you to actually think about it before responding.”

“Still no.”

“Take a minute. Give it some thought.”

“I don’t have to.”

“Stop being stubborn.”

“Do you regret moving in with me?”

“Not at all.”

“See, you didn’t give it thought.”

“I’ve already thought about it. Every time you stay late at work, I think about it.”

“You’re throwing that in my face, but you don’t regret it?”

“Yes, I am. And no, I don’t.”

“Do you regret coming here with me?”

“Here, Bozeman or here, downtown?”

“Either. Both. Doesn’t matter.”

Montana looked at Evan, at his face, his head, and saw where he hid so often—where, so often, she had no way of reaching him at all. He was afraid she might say yes. She could see him processing the possibility. How he’d proceed. His options from there. All filtered through the hope that she’d so no. Asking was a risk for him. Answering was for her. She was very afraid of saying it wrong. “When I said I was coming with you on this trip, I was so sure you’d say no. I was afraid you thought I’d make things worse by being a distraction. In retrospect, it’s kind of funny. Funny in a way that’s wrecking me. But I don’t regret it. I went from pitying Mina because she couldn’t off herself, to knowing that if she hadn’t failed—if she hadn’t gotten so close this last time—I never would’ve met her. If I regret anything, it’s that I thought I had her figured out.” Montana hated crying. She forced a laugh that died as soon as it left her.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just— Look at me, you know? I mean, honestly. Look at me, falling to fucking pieces. Who’s the pitiful one now?”

*

It was still dark when Mina woke up. She put on her gardening gloves. She held a bag of soil in her good arm and a packet of hollyhock seeds in her pocket. She stepped slow on her way to the garden. The air smelled cold and fresh. She was glad she hadn’t taken painkillers. Evan had offered. She’d told him no. There was no such thing as a painless death. She was going to miss his girl. She’d looked different when they were on the roof. Less squirrelly. More sure. She wore sunglasses like James Dean’s. Wore them and looked better than he did. Younger. Happier. More alive. Mina knelt in the ice and the snow. It was hard on her knees. She might’ve had a replacement. But that would’ve meant a long recovery. And for what? Who had time? Well—Mina did. But certainly not the patience. She didn’t have enough patience to wait for time to finish her off. Shame her last attempt had been so close. She could see the fence rising out of the snow. The ER doctors said it wouldn’t have held her. But they don’t know a post from a rail—Phil had plugged every last picket until they went deep as a well. It would’ve held if she’d managed to reach it. Mina heard Evan and Montana. They were bickering as they stomped through the yard. What would the neighbors say? Senile Mina gardening in the snow. Her heartless grandson running her down. Poor Annette. Poor Annette, they’d say. Because they couldn’t let her be. There was the engine. There were the headlights. There was Mina’s shadow. She turned away from it, turned toward the car. They had to hit her headfirst. Otherwise, she might survive. With her track record, survival seemed likely. She leaned forward on her good hand, what would’ve been all fours when she was well. All threes would have to do now. The whole thing would have to do. She hoped she blacked out before they backed over her. She didn’t want to think it through. She didn’t want to doubt. There was no time. She heard the tires crush the snow. She shut her eyes and made her peace. Her body shook and clenched. The engine gunned, the tires squealed, and then: a sharpened crack.

*

Evan couldn’t recall the last thing he’d said to Annette, nor what she’d said to him. (Irretrievable data, permanently corrupted files.) But reminders lingered in every open window—Annette’s letters, the photos above the bed, Meemaw just down the hall. Where his memory failed, he made up versions of how it might’ve gone.

Take care of Meemaw.

ERROR: Requested operation requires elevation.

Take care of Meemaw.

ERROR: Requested operation requires evaluation.

Take care of Meemaw.

ERROR: Requested operation requires specification.

He was in over his head. He needed more time. There were too many ways to take care.

His last conversation with Meemaw though, who’d been awake when they got back to the house, began with her saying: “Don’t screw this up.”

“We’ll try our best not to.”

“Hell, not this. This’ll get done. I meant your thing with Montana.”

Montana, there next to him. Another reminder, one he’d misunderstood. Not a reminder of the uncertain, but that certainties could still hold surprises.

*

Angling her arms across Evan, Montana kept her hands on the wheel. They’d decided to share the driving: Evan took the pedals while she steered. The headlights flashed and Evan hit the gas while the car was still in park. The engine growled. The brakes resisted. Montana saw Annette above the car—not Dead Annette but Poor Annette floating above the hood. Poor Annette and poor Mina. Montana’s hands left the wheel. The car inched forward and her fingers shook the air.

Evan put the car in drive.

Mina always put chains on her tires, so the car cleared the snow and ice easy, but the driveway went slick and the tires screamed the way Montana wanted to. The front half of the car lunged toward the garden. The back left trails in the snow. But Montana found Mina’s face, and time slid to a crawl.

Mina leaned forward—head up, chest out—a bull ready to fight. She cradled her broken arm close to her chest, and its sling hung wide and loose. Montana saw her good eye twinge, a cross between fear and doubt. Hesitation that spun scenes from Mina’s life, the sequel. Life: Part Two: Grilled cheese on the regular. Relearning how to eat. Memorizing the seasons on Homecoming. Reminding Evan he now had two good reasons to leave work on time. Accepting their plan as flawed, in that it felt way too soon, and, if not too soon, then underdeveloped. It would only improve with time—it could at least, if only they’d let it. But letting it wasn’t enough. Montana had to prove to Mina that this wasn’t some misfit emotional band-aid. It wasn’t a thoughtless, selfish wish. It was a full-fledged promise to stay. They would stay. She and Evan would. They’d go back to Glenview just once—to gather their stuff. Then they’d come back to Bozeman for their own homecoming. And they’d laugh and scream and hurt each other. And they’d forgive when they couldn’t forget. And when she died, they’d bury her, like any proper family.

Montana’s hands landed. She turned the wheel hard. The car swerved sharp and fast. They stopped on impact. A serious snap. But they’d missed Mina by an arm. They’d veered past her garden, and in the process, they took out her daily reminder. In bypassing Mina and her garden, they completely totaled the fence.

*

Evan didn’t argue when Montana called the swerve her failsafe means of saving Mina. Meemaw didn’t point out that saving her was antithetical to their plan. And no one said anything about how they’d failed or what they’d do going forward. But Meemaw said all the neighbors would think whatever she had was genetic. “Driving through the fence. In the middle of the night. In the snow. Sakes alive. Between me and Aunt Shirl, they’ll think you’re a crackpot by blood.” Meemaw’s laugh was a string of lights blinking out of sync, but she went to work tending to Evan and Montana like things were fine (ointment for the welts across their waists and the burns on their collarbones [from the seatbelts]; iodine for the cuts on Montana’s knees [from when her legs hit the dashboard]; bandages over the chemical burns on Evan’s wrists [from the airbag]; ice and heat for their whiplash [from the impact with the fence]; and acetaminophen for their backs [1300mg every 8 hours]). Turned out Meemaw was an expert at wound care. “Comes with the territory.” And, Evan noticed, her eye looked clearer as she told them so.

“Meemaw?”

“Yeah?”

“Forget the neighbors.”

Meemaw hooked her arm toward Evan, though it was still in a sling. An affectionate gesture, the idea of a hug, the closest they’d get to embracing. And she looked at Montana and pointed from her to Evan and back and nodded. An appraisal. Assent. Then she left the room.

“You know where she’s going?” Montana said. “To watch an episode of Homecoming.”

She looked toward the door as if waiting for a cue. The theme song manifested in the air. “I think she was sad about having to go before she’d had a chance to watch it all.”

“What’ll we do when the episodes run out?”

“Watch reruns. And debate about how the new season could possibly measure up.”

Evan wanted to hate that, but took comfort in it instead—Bozeman’s old, frustrating code had gotten an overdue update. But he couldn’t force it into some standard memorized language. None of the rules he’d learned could communicate their bind. All the systems he knew were too much. Nothing ran consistent. But, coding off the cuff, he found he could hold one clear equation in his head:

Coming Home = BOZEMAN = [MEEMAW + MONTANA]

His wild cards had become a single variable. But they both had to stay put. Otherwise, the formula ran the risk of losing its elegant balance.

“Montana.”

“Hmm.”

“You know we can’t stay here.”

“No. I don’t know that.”

“She’ll do it again. I can’t be here to see that.”

The doctors had warned Montana she needed to fix her posture to protect her neck (otherwise, she’d have to see a specialist to recover from her whiplash), so she straightened her spine and squared her shoulders as she turned to face Evan. If her voice had stayed even, she could’ve been a robot, but it swung between patience and disbelief. “Why did you come back this time? Mina drank bleach and you stayed in Glenview. She bashed her own head with a bottle of rum—”

“It was whiskey.”

“Whatever. It could’ve been filled with cement. You still would’ve stayed home.”

“She jumped off the roof.”

“And landed on a different part of the roof. But you came running. Why?”

“I didn’t mean to stay.”

“Yet here you are. And you brought me with you.”

Evan’s head felt overloaded. “You think this is my fault.”

“No. But I do think you wanted to be here. You talk about Annette like she’s still alive, and Mina like she’s already dead. Whatever life she’s got left should be spent doing what she wants.”

“She wants to die.”

“If I were stuck here alone, I’d want to die too. What if we gave her the option to leave?”

“We can’t take her to Glenview.”

“Why not? We could show her Chicago. We could watch the documentary about the Spanish sheep.”

“They’re not Spanish.”

“I know they’re not.”

“We can’t just take her to Glenview. This is where she’s always been.”

“Then we’re staying.”

“She won’t stop. You get that, right? She’s not going to stop for us.”

“Then we’ll stay till she goes. And in the meantime, we give her what we’ve got.” Montana swung her legs out of bed. Her shoulders cracked as she stood. She grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the table. “I’ll be back.”

Evan felt like something had been forced from him. (Information, data, memory.) “You’re going out to smoke? We’re talking about taking care of Meemaw, and you’re taking a smoke break?”

Montana held up her hand. “I’m going out to hide these in the backyard. Step One of Mina’s rehab. She let us in. Now we can make things better from the inside.”

Montana held a finger to her lips and slipped her sunglasses on, a pair of imitation wayfarers, showing Evan his own reflection. But he also saw Bozeman as she saw it: a dark, symmetrical compromise with her on one side, him on the other, the house all around them, and the space in between—space that surrounded and miniaturized her as she left the room, but, Montana being Montana (x being x), she’d already surrounded the town. She was the state, and more than that, she was both blip and motherboard. She could reverse engineer the future. But she didn’t have to recode the past. And she didn’t have to sacrifice the present. With Montana at its helm, Evan could learn Bozeman’s new script. Even after Meemaw. With her as its helm, he could do right by the ghosts in Bozeman’s machine.

*

In the episode after Conrad’s Sarah died, the theme song ended early. Montana thought that was tasteful, even if Evan was right: it didn’t make sense, the way she went. The way they went about it. Too careless, too careful. Too hopeless. Too hopeful: pretending they could’ve helped her. And after that, having to face each other. They couldn’t. But they did face Mina. Montana watched her watch them overlap, their voices competing, pleading—begging to know what they should do. And it doesn’t get any easier. They all go home. Together. And together, they tell Conrad. But out of earshot. And though they’re in frame, they’re out of focus, so you can’t see their mouths. And then they leave. The credits roll. The season wraps up early. And when the show starts again, nobody says a word about it. It’s like the family secret everyone knew, but was too polite to bring up. Montana used to hate it. She told Mina so, once the episode was over.

“Used to?”

“Well—sort of. I still kind of hate it. But I get it too. They lived through this thing and it holds them together.” Mina laughed through her teeth. A quiet hiss. “That’s funny?”

“Sure is.”

“Because you’re the glue?”

“Because of how you said it. They lived through this thing. But one of them didn’t. And here we are, living through our thing, even though I’d planned on going—well, going above and beyond.”

“Oh, deadly pun!” Mina groaned. “Too soon?”

“No. Too late.”

“It’s never too late.”

“Sweetheart. I can’t be your glue.”

Montana pretended to be insulted. “You’re so much more than glue.” She gripped Mina’s hand and channeled her best after-school-special voice. “Which is why—” But it wavered, betrayed her shaky breath, weakened with relief. She cleared her throat. “Which is why we’re all still here.”

“You’re still here because you and Evan can’t hit a half-dead target from five lousy feet away.”

“Our target was fairly lively.”

“No wonder you can’t steer. Your eyes are going. Back to bed with you.”

“I’m sick of bed. I wanted some air.”

“I saw you go out back. The front walk’s safer. It’s shoveled and salted and whatnot.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to see the back.”

“What for? It’s nothing but ice.”

“Easier to hide your cigarettes.”

“Really?” Mina uprooted a pack from the pocket of her housecoat. “Want one?”

“No. I shouldn’t. And neither should you. Evan’ll be able to smell it.”

Mina held a cigarette in her lips, tipped it once like a shrug. “So what? Live a little.”

Montana took the pack and emptied it into her palm. She dropped them in her water glass, half-full, swished it around, and set it down: “Live a lot. That’s the hope, anyway.”

“I’ll just buy more.”

“I know.” Montana felt Mina pulling away. “You want to watch another episode?” Mina shook her head. “How about the roof? I bet it’s pretty this time of day.”

“You’d break her neck just pushing the hope chest to the window.”

“Well then. Let’s take more photos. We could do a series called Recovery. You, me, and Evan. Then we’ll print them and hang them with the rest in the guestroom.”

“You’re not guests. Not now that you’re staying.”

“I told you that before.”

“That’s not what you meant.”

“No. But it’s what I mean now. A lady can change her mind.” Montana got her phone out and aimed it at Mina. “Now, hold it right there. That’s great. You look like you want to murder me. No, don’t laugh—it’s ruined if you laugh. All right, now say, real slow: Long live Mina.”

And the shutter closed just as Mina was halfway through her name.

Carissa Halston’s fiction has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Fourteen Hills, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Boston, where she runs the press Aforementioned Productions and the literary journal apt.