Minnie, she’d said, recalling the woman from the convenience store all those years ago. Sunshine had nodded her agreement. Let’s name her Minnie.
As godmother, Lavender made it her job to witness. Minnie grew, from a squealing toddler, to an eight-year-old with blackened knees, to a sullen teenager who refused to cut her hair. Finally, to a young woman, who packed a single bag one morning and walked out of the valley. When Minnie left, Lavender spent days tracing the forest paths with Sunshine, arms crossed against the chill, their boots crinkling dried leaves into the dirt.
So Sunshine understood how time could be a knife. Lodged already, just waiting to twist. As the van slowed onto a crowded city block, Lavender stroked the Buddha in her slick, nervous palm, imagining Sunshine in the back seat. Sunshine would shake her prickly head, a question without judgment, a genuine wondering: Why didn’t you ever go back for them?
*
“Are you ready?” Harmony asked.
They idled outside the coffee shop where she would be meeting Cheryl. The gallery was across the street—the opening did not begin for another hour, but the block seemed charged already, buzzing with anticipation.
“Not really,” Lavender said.
“It will be okay,” Harmony said, though her voice was shaky and uncertain. “I’ll be at Deena’s, a few blocks away. You’re strong, Lavender. So incredibly strong.”
Lavender had no patience for Harmony’s platitudes. She grabbed her backpack, checked her teeth in the rearview, and opened the door. Her hair felt greasy, even buzzed as it was, and a nervous sweat had soaked through her shirt, dried cold. The cardigan she’d brought was not heavy enough for the salty breeze that whistled between the low, bright buildings. Without another word, Lavender slid from the car, her body surging with a shot of adrenaline.
The city was a monster. She stepped into the mouth of it.
*
The coffee shop was young and trendy, with succulents lining every windowsill. When Lavender ordered a green tea, the barista took in her appearance: bald head, beaded earrings, dirt-caked clogs. She fumbled clumsily with the cash, overtipping as she took stock of the place—a few tables were occupied by fashionable young people reading books or chatting quietly. Lavender’s throat felt gravelly. Anxious, full of regret. There was only one other woman her age, perched at a table in the corner.
Cheryl Harrison.
When she stood to wave, Lavender saw that Cheryl was tall. Nearly six feet. She had a shock of chestnut hair, bundled elegantly beneath a knotted scarf, and wore delicate hoop earrings with a dress that billowed at the elbows. The dress was made of a flowing satin, silky and deliberate. Liquid brown eyes roved up and down as Lavender slid into the empty seat. Cheryl had ordered a black coffee, and a perfect kiss of lipstick circled the rim of the mug.
“Well,” Cheryl said. “You must be Lavender.”
Cheryl’s back was narrow and straight, perched at the edge of her chair. Like a cat, Lavender thought. Regal, elegant. Cheryl was probably in her early sixties, though there was a texture to her skin that made Lavender feel baggy—when she smiled, her face showed no wrinkles, only laugh lines refined around the eyes. She wore a pair of high-heeled sandals, and her toes were painted red, like clean little cherries. When Cheryl lifted her coffee cup, Lavender noticed a streak of yellow paint across the belly of her palm.
“Congratulations,” Lavender said, awkward. “On the gallery, I mean.”
“Oh, thank you. It’s rather exciting, isn’t it? Denny, my husband, encouraged me to get into photography before he died, and I only wish I’d done it sooner.”
The barista delivered Lavender’s tea—an empty mug, accompanied by a complicated contraption of a teapot. There was a certain hardness to Cheryl, Lavender thought, but it was not unkindness. Instead, a wisdom. The sort of self-assurance that seemed to shrink Lavender inside her own skin. Just a year ago, this woman had presumably lived through September 11. Yet here she sat, her trauma enviably invisible.
Cheryl squinted, appraising. “Have you ever been painted?”
“Uh,” Lavender stumbled. “No.”
“Really,” Cheryl said. “I mean, your face. There are whole worlds in it.”
Lavender had no idea what to do with that, and Cheryl seemed to acquiesce, because she shifted, the satin of her dress pooling in her lap. Lavender could picture Cheryl’s apartment, a sudden vision in perfect clarity: high ceilings, gilded windows, art all over the walls. Everything would be vivid and intentional. A modern sofa, a refurbished oak table, trinkets from foreign countries displayed next to first-edition poetry books. The kind of alternate, moneyed life Lavender sometimes imagined for herself—a fantasy in which things had been different from the start.