lizabeth passed a gobsmacked and disapproving Mrs. Bracken, who was standing at the door with two other elderly women, all with pieces of fabric in their hands. They tutted as she trudged by with paint in clumps in the ends of her hair, which was rubbing against her back and causing a beautiful multicolored effect.

"Is she losing her marbles or what?" the woman beside her whispered loudly.

"No, quite the opposite." Elizabeth could hear the smile in Mrs. Bracken's voice. "I'd say she's been on her hands and knees looking for them."

The other women tutted and wandered away, muttering about Elizabeth not being the only one losing her marbles.

Elizabeth ignored the stare from Becca and the shout from Poppy, "That's more like it!", and marched into her office, closing the door softly behind her. Shutting everything out. She leaned her back against the door and tried to figure out why her body was shaking so much. What had been stirred inside her? What monsters had awoken from their slumber and were bubbling away under her skin? She breathed in deeply through her nostrils and exhaled slowly, counting one, two, three times until her weak knees stopped trembling.

Everything had been fine if not mildly embarrassing as she walked

through the town looking like she had dipped herself a pot of rainbow-colored paint. It had all been fine until Ivan said something, what did he say, he said... and then she remembered and a chill ran through her body.

Flanagan's Pub. She always avoided Flanagan's Pub, he said. She hadn't noticed until he had brought it to her attention. Why did she do it, because of Saoirse? No, Saoirse drank in the Camel's Hump, on the hill, down the road. She remained leaning against the door, thinking, until her head was dizzy with all the thoughts. The room spun around her and she decided she needed to get home. Home to where she could control what went on, who could enter, who could leave, where things had their own place and where every memory was clear. She needed order.

"Where's your beanbag, Ivan?" Calendula asked, looking up at me from her yellow-painted wooden chair.

"Oh, I got tired of that," I replied. "Spinning is my new favorite thing now."

"Nice." She nodded with approval.

"Opal's really late," Tommy said, wiping his runny nose along his arm.

Calendula looked away in disgust, fixed her pretty yellow dress, crossed her ankles, and swung her white patent shoes and frilly socks while she hummed the humming song.

Olivia knitted in her rocking chair. "She'll be here," she rasped.

Jamie-Lynn reached out to the center table to grab a chocolate Rice Krispies bun and a glass of milk and as she coughed and spluttered, her glass of milk spilled all over her arm. She licked it off.

"Have you been playing in the doctor's waiting room again, Jamie-Lynn?" Olivia asked, glaring at her over the rims of her glasses.

Jamie-Lynn nodded and coughed again on her bun and took a bite.

Calendula wrinkled her nose in disgust and continued combing her Barbie's hair with a small comb.

"You know what Opal told you, Jamie-Lynn, those places are full of bacteria. Those toys you like to play with are the cause of you being ill."

"I know," Jamie-Lynn said with food in her mouth, "but someone's got to keep the kids company when they're waiting for the doctor."

Twenty minutes passed and eventually Opal showed. Everyone looked at one another with worry. It looked as though Opal's shadow had taken her place. She didn't float into the room like a fresh morning breeze as she usually did; it was as though every step she took were laden down with heavy buckets of cement. Everyone quieted immediately, seeing the deep blue, almost black color that followed her in.

"Good afternoon, my friends," Opal addressed the room. Even her voice was different, as though she were being muffled and held back in another dimension.

"Hello, Opal." Everybody's tones were soft and hushed, as though a little more than a whisper would knock her usually strong walls to rubble.

She gave us a gentle smile, acknowledging our support. "Somebody who has been a friend of mine for a great deal of time is sick. Very sick. He's going to die and I'm very sad to lose him," she explained.

Everyone made soothing noises. Olivia stopped rocking in her chair, Bobby stopped rolling back and forth on his skateboard, Calendula's legs stopped kicking back and forth, Tommy even stopped sniffing the snot back up his nose, and I stopped swinging on my chair. This was serious stuff and the group talked about what it's like to lose people they love. Everyone understood, it happened to best friends all the time, and each time it happened, the sadness never dissipated.

I couldn't contribute to the conversation. Every emotion I had ever felt for Elizabeth gathered and swelled in my throat, like a pumping heart receiving more and more love every moment and growing bigger and prouder as a result. The lump in my throat prevented me from speaking, just as my growing heart prevented me from stopping loving Elizabeth.

Just as the meeting was ending, Opal looked to me. "Ivan, how are things with Elizabeth?"

Everyone looked at me and I found a tiny hole in that lump for my sound to seep through. "I've left her until tomorrow to figure something out." I thought of her face and my heart pumped quicker and grew, and that tiny hole in the lump of my throat closed.

And without anyone knowing my situation, they all understood it to mean, "Not long now." By the way Opal quickly picked up her files and fled the adjourned meeting, I figured it was the same case for her.

Elizabeth's feet pounded on the treadmill that faced the back garden in her home. She looked out at the hills, the lakes, and mountains spread before her, and ran even faster. Her hair blew behind her as she ran, her brow glistened, her arms moved with her legs, and she imagined as she did every day that she was running over those hills, across the seas, far, far away. After thirty minutes of running and running yet staying in the same place she stopped, left the small gym panting and weak, and immediately began to clean, scrubbing furiously at surfaces that already sparkled.

As soon as she had cleaned the house from top to bottom, had wiped away all the cobwebs, cleared every darkened hidden corner, she began to do the same with her mind. All her life she had run from shedding light on those darkened corners of her mind. The cobwebs and dust had settled and now she was ready to start clearing them. Something was trying to crawl out of that darkness and now she was ready to help it. Enough running.

She sat at the kitchen table and stared out at the country spread before her, tumbling hills, valleys, and lakes with fuchsia and montbretia lacing them all. The sky was darkening earlier now that August had arrived, causing it to appear like a snow shaker that had been turned upside down and that now allowed the dusk to be sprinkled upon them.

She thought long and hard about nothing and everything, allowing whatever was niggling her mind to have a chance to step out of the shadows and show itself. It was the same niggling feeling she ran from while she lay in bed trying to sleep, the feeling she fought while furiously cleaning. But now she sat at the table a surrendered woman, with her hands held high, stepping away from her weapon and allowing her thoughts to hold her under arrest. She had been like an escaped criminal on the run for so long.

"Why are you sitting in the dark?" a sweet voice called out to her in the dark.

She smiled lightly. "I'm just thinking, Luke."

"Can I sit with you?" he asked and she hated herself for wanting to say no. "I won't say anything or touch anything, I promise," he added.

That twisted her heart; was she really that bad? Yes, she knew she was. "Come over and sit down." She smiled, pulling out the chair beside her.

They both sat in the darkened kitchen in silence until Elizabeth spoke. "Luke, there are some things that I should talk to you about. Things I should have spoken to you about before now but..." She twisted her fingers, trying very carefully to decide how to word what she wanted to say. When she was a child, all she wanted was for people to explain what had happened, where her mother had gone and why. A simple explanation would have helped years and years of torturous wondering.

He looked at her with big blue eyes from under long lashes, chubby cheeks that were rosy, and a glistening upper lip from a runny nose. She laughed and ran a hand through his snow-white hair and left it resting on the back of his hot little neck.

"But," she continued, "I didn't know how to say them to you."

"Is it about my mom?" Luke asked, his legs swinging below the glass table.

"Yes." Elizabeth nodded. "She hasn't visited us in a while as you've probably noticed."

"She's gone on an adventure," Luke said happily.

"Well, I don't know if you could call it that, Luke." Elizabeth sighed. "I don't know where she's gone, sweetheart. She didn't tell anyone before she left."

"She told me," he chirped.

"What?" Elizabeth's eyes widened, her heart quickened.

"She came to the house before she went away. She told me she was going away but she didn't know for how long. And I said that's kind of like an adventure and she laughed and said yes."

"Did she say why?" Elizabeth whispered, surprised that Saoirse had the compassion to say goodbye to her son.

"Mmm-hmmm." He nodded, kicking his feet faster now. "She said because it was best for her and you and Granddad and me because she kept doing the wrong things and making everyone mad. She said she was doing what you always told her to do, she said she was flying away."

Elizabeth held her breath lightly and remembered how she used to tell her baby sister to fly away when things were tough at home. She remembered how she watched her little six-year-old sister as she drove away to college and told her over and over again to fly away. All her emotions caught in her throat.

"What did you say?" Elizabeth managed to force out, running her hand through Luke's baby-soft hair and feeling an overwhelming urge to protect him more than anything for the first time in her life.

"I told her she was probably right," Luke replied matter-of-factly. "She said that I was a big boy now and it was my job to look after you and Granddad."

Tears fell from her eyes. "She did?" she sniffed.

Luke lifted his hand and delicately wiped her tear with his smooth, soft skin.

"Well, don't you worry." She kissed his hand and reached out to hug him. "Because it's my job to look after you, OK?"

His reply was muffled as his head was pushed against her chest. She let go of him quickly to allow him to breathe.

"Edith will be home soon," he said excitedly after he had taken a deep breath. "Can't wait to see what she got me."

Elizabeth smiled, tried to quickly compose herself, and cleared her throat. "We can introduce her to Ivan. Do you think she'll like him?"

Luke wrinkled up his face. "I don't think she'll be able to see him."

"We can't keep him to ourselves, you know, Luke." Elizabeth laughed.

"Anyway, Ivan might not even be here when she gets back," he added.

Elizabeth's heart thudded. "What do you mean? Did he say something?"

Luke shook his head.

Elizabeth sighed. "Oh, Luke, just because you're close to Ivan it doesn't mean he'll leave you, you know. I don't want you to be afraid of that happening. I used to be afraid like that. I used to think that everyone I loved would always go away."

"/ won't go away." Luke looked at her caringly.

"And I promise you I won't go anywhere either." She kissed him on the head. She cleared her throat. "You know the things that you and Edith do together, like going to the zoo and the cinema, things like that?"

Luke nodded.

"Would you mind if I came along sometimes?"

Luke smiled happily. "Yeah, that'd be cool." He thought for a while. "We're kind of the same now, aren't we? My mom leaving is kinda like what your mom did, isn't it?" Luke asked, breathing on the glass table and writing his name in the fog with his finger.

Elizabeth's body grew cold. "No," she snapped, "it's nothing like that at all." She stood up from the table, switched on the light, and started wiping down the counter. "They are totally different people, it's not the same at all." Her voice trembled as she scrubbed furiously. Looking up to check on Luke, she caught sight of her reflection in the glass of the conservatory and froze. Gone was the composure, gone were her emotions; she looked like a possessed woman hiding from the truth, running from the world.

And then she knew.

And the memories that lurked in the dark corners of her mind began to creep ever so slowly into the light.