1 Homecoming

Outside the window of their jeep the trees grew progressively shorter and more gnarled. As the trees shrank, the houses got higher off the ground. Josie Breaux yawned as she scratched her dark, unruly curls with both hands. She had a profusion of freckles on her tanned skin and heavy bangs over her hazel eyes, which had dark crescents under them from lack of sleep.

Almost all yards they'd passed had hummingbird feeders on their front porches, and little statues of Mary in little homemade grottos featured prominently in the yard. At least three of the grottos she'd seen were made out of antique bath tubs standing up as though they were a sinking ships gone half-way into the ocean of grass. Had she not been so exhausted, she would have found that a bit funny. She rolled her hand, imitating the waves of the ocean, grinning sleepily as the grass bent and swayed in mimicry.

"At least we'll sleep on mattresses tonight," her mom, Brenda, said cheerfully. She looked very much like her daughter, except that her eyes were brown rather than hazel and her hair was streaked with gray.

Josie raised a thumb and gave her a weak grin. Her phone beeped a text alert. Opening it she read, "Nat: Are we there yet?"

They hit a pothole and she typed, "Def in LA," and pressed send. Turning to her mom she said, "Natalie's excited."

"What about you?" Brenda asked, giving her daughter a light nudge, "you excited?"

"I'll tell you when I wake up," Josie said with a half-grin. "I think she's excited enough for both of us."

Natalie was her first cousin, her mom's sister's daughter. Despite the fact that she was a year older than Josie and they'd never lived close to each other before, they'd always stayed in touch and she was the closest thing to a best friend Josie had.

Perhaps the oddest part of the whole move to Josie was that she would be living next to her extended family for the first time in her life. Her aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandmother all lived in Touchet, Louisiana. Her mom had grown up in the town, but outside of visiting for a few holidays and two weeks one summer, Josie hardly knew a thing about the place. She did, however, have enough experience with small towns to know that the gossip had probably preceded them. She leaned her head against the cool glass of the window and gave a silent sigh; the prodigal daughter and her illegitimate child return.

Brenda had left the day after high school graduation and, up until three months before the move, had never looked back. She was a photojournalist who usually worked freelance for travel and nature magazines. They were moving to Louisiana, though, so she could work on her own book about the vanishing wetlands along the coast. This project promised to take at least a year, which was an unusually long amount of time for them to stay in one place. That had been part of her promise to Josie when they moved from Alaska. No more moving until Josie turned eighteen; that gave her eleven months and fifteen days. At first that had seemed like a great idea, especially since she'd be so close to Nat, but the more she thought about it, the more apprehensive she became.

As if reading her mind, Brenda said, "I think you'll like it here, the house is right in the middle of the woods, and a few miles south of that there are some beautiful marshlands. Aunt Susan's is only about 10 minutes away. Sue says Janie's is still opened; remember the dance hall I told you about?"

"Sure; should be fun," she said a bit flatly as she flicked through the stations to avoid the commercials. It certainly had sounded fun when Brenda had first asked her about moving from Alaska to Louisiana. She wasn't a fan of snow, and the prospect of moving away before winter had a chance to return was welcomed.

She had been born in Louisiana. Her mom was working for a newspaper in Gretna, but since she was three she had been moving from state to state, from one country and continent to another. They were constantly chasing the next story or project. The inside of their Jeep seemed more like home than any house she'd lived in, despite the fact that her mom made each place they'd lived inviting and comfortable. The last time they'd lived anywhere for a solid year she'd been fifteen.

Exhaustion and anxiety aside she was excited at the prospect of spending the summer exploring the woods and marshes, hanging out with Natalie and her younger brother, Sean, and until a few days prior to their departure, she could think and talk about little else. However, being on the road for a week, camping in a tent at state parks along the way, she had lost more sleep than she was accustomed to and a lot of her pep had died away. It seemed every time she went to close her eyes, she would have the same awful dream that she was being chased by wolves. It didn't help that she would sometimes be woken by their howls outside the thin tent walls.

There was no "Welcome to Touchet" sign, but rather a small green and white rectangle, half hidden by honeysuckles, that said, "Touchet" and nothing more. Along the highway there were small subdivisions and large farms, with their houses set far off the road. As they rounded a bend, three sets of huge buildings came into view. At first it looked a bit like the skyline of a small metropolis, but as they drove closer, she realized they were grain elevators. She couldn't help laughing at herself.

"What's so funny?" Brenda asked, smiling at her.

"They just kind of looked like a little city; you know, from further back. Hey, can you pull into the parking lot?"

Stepping out the car she pulled out her phone and pointed the camera lens up, framing the height of a set of tin towers. That was definitely going into the scrapbook.

After going over the railroad track, they passed a small general store, bait shop, feed store, lumber yard, and gas station, then turned off the main street onto a gravel road near a red, brick church named "Our Lady of the Seas". At least this Mary isn't in a half-submerged bathtub, Josie thought.

It wasn't long before their jeep was pulling into a gravel driveway that led to a one-story, white, wooden house, set on tall wooden pillars, with a concrete slab carport underneath. There was already a brown sedan parked under it, and Natalie was sitting on the hood. She jumped up when she saw them pull into the drive, waving like crazy.

Besides a few palmetto clusters, that may have wound up in the yard on accident, there was no landscaping on the large, neatly mowed lawn. Along the three sides of the yard that weren't facing the road there was thick forest. She noticed these trees seemed to grow taller than those that stood alone near the road, perhaps because they buffered the strong Gulf breeze for each other.

It was about as vastly different a locale as possible from the three story apartment building they'd left behind in Juneau. The apartment, whose only "yard" had been a couple of flower gardens in front of the lobby, had been on a busy street that was a blend of old and new architecture. She could walk to the grocery store and library, and it was a short bike ride to almost anything else she could have wanted to do, even escaping into nature. It appeared there wouldn't be any shortage of wildlife at this location, anyway, and that was a very welcomed sign.

As she opened the door of the Jeep, Natalie tackled her in a hug. "Hey, cuz! Welcome back home," she said, her rapid words melted into each other in a cadence that was uniquely Cajun. She was an inch shorter than Josie, with blonde hair and paler skin, but just as many freckles.

"Hey, Nat," she said, squeezing her shoulders.

"Y'all have a mover following?"

Laughing, Josie did her best game show girl impersonation and waved her hands across the back of the Jeep, "Nope, everything's behind door number three."

"The house is furnished," Brenda said as she walked around the Jeep and hugged her niece. "How've you been?"

"Bored out of my mind, Touchet's still Touchet," she said, "Summer semester starts in few weeks and if you guys hadn't come, I'd have signed on just to beat the blahs. Oh, you've got to come to campus with me some day, Jo."

Josie smiled, pulling her backpack onto her shoulder. "I'm going to have to find a job, but hopefully I'll get some time off."

"Hmm, I don't know anywhere in town that's hiring right now. I was working at Babineaux's, but when I quit she gave the job to her great-niece, Shelly Marshall. Maybe you could try the gas station, or hey, you could work at the feed store. I think Jeremy got deployed and I think Michelle's going to LSU this summer. They'll be shorthanded. I can introduce you, if you want."

Josie smiled, "Yeah, anything would be great." Grabbing her phone out her pocket she scanned through the photos until she found one of a 1964 Mustang Coupe, "I want to get one of these before I go to college."

"Nice!" Natalie said with a whistle. "You planning to rebuild it yourself or buy one that's already running?"

Laughing, Josie shoved the phone back in her pocket as they started the long trek up the stairs, "I'll have to get it already running. I can't fix anything that has electricity involved."

"It's actually a rule now," Brenda said, half joking, from behind them. "She blew up an oven two years ago."

"A toaster oven," Josie clarified.

"You blew up a toaster oven?" Natalie snorted.

"All I did was try to replace the plug. The plastic had got melted off of it, by accident, and I figured, 'Why go out and buy a new one if this one can be fixed?' And it didn't explode, it just caught on fire."

At the last statement, Natalie broke out into laughter, "Oh my God, I'm going to love having you here."

The house was small, but clean and bright, thanks to the many windows. Josie had expected a house so high up to sway with the wind a bit, but outside of an odd hollow sound when she walked, there was no difference between this house and any other she'd lived in stateside.

The larger bedroom, which was to the right, was her mom's, and the almost impossibly small one, to the left, was hers. She didn't mind the smallness of it, especially as it had a bay window and a glass door that led out to the patio behind the house. Most of the room was taken up by a brass daybed that Josie had fallen in love with from the pictures online. There was also a bookshelf built into the wall, a desk with a straight back chair, and a small closet with a dresser built into the bottom.

Natalie plopped herself down on the bare mattress, looking around, "It sure is a good thing you pack light. There isn't much place to put anything besides yourself. It's pretty cool that you've got your own door, though." Winking she added, "Better for sneaking out."

Josie laughed as she set her bag on top of the dresser and looked around. The walls were a pale yellow that would have looked rather sickly had there not been so much light streaming in from the midday sun. Like the rest of the house, besides the living room, there was a bare hard-wood floor and a brass ceiling fan. Sitting down besides Natalie she said, "You know, I've never had to sneak out before. Mom's pretty lenient. As long as I call to tell her where I am, I can stay out till dawn if I want."

"Oh, God, I wish. Mama and Daddy would've killed me."

"Would have?"

"Well, I'm 18 now, so they loosened up the reins, but last year," she whistled. "I don't think I would have graduated if I'd have stayed out till dawn."

Josie shrugged, "I've only done it once or twice."

"With your boyfriend, what was it, Tyler?" she asked with a sly grin.

"Okay, maybe three of four times, and once or twice was with him," Josie sighed. "But he's not my boyfriend anymore. When we moved from Arizona, we agreed to just be friends. Anyway, he's got a new girlfriend, and I'm completely over him."

"Which is why you still smile when you hear his name?"

"Because we're friends," Josie said defensively, gently slapping her arm. "And we had some really good times together. So of course I smile when I hear his name."

"Like right now," Natalie said devilishly, "plus, you're totally blushing. You're still into your little soldier boy."

Picking at a loose thread on the mattress, she grinned more devilishly than she felt and said, "Who knows, maybe I'll meet someone new here. Prove you wrong."

Her mom poked her head in, "What do you think of Friday for the barbeque?"

Josie nodded, happy for the change in conversation. It was a family tradition to hold a neighborhood barbeque the week they moved somewhere new. Last time almost everyone from their apartment complex and half the people on their block came to their rooftop banquet.

"Natalie, can you ask Susan this afternoon? I'll call Mom later and see if she'll be able to make it. Then I'll make the fliers," she sang the last word. Josie resisted the urge to roll her eyes; her mother had an inordinate love of fliers.

By the time the sun had set, they had moved everything out of the Jeep into the house. Natalie had stayed long enough to get the last box in, but then she had to go help her family with the evening chores. The house didn't quite look like home yet, but by dinner time she had made her bed with the quilt her Maw-Maw had made for her several years back, the one with thistles and dandelions in vibrant colored fabric. The swirling quilt stitches looked like wind blowing over the flowers. It was her favorite. She'd also put all her books on the shelf and all her clothes away in the closet. Her vinyl record player was sitting on the desk, next to her laptop. Nat had laughed when she found it, but had flipped through the albums asking Josie to put this one or that one on, while they unpacked. There were still two boxes to unpack, but she was sure it shouldn't take much time.

At supper that night, Josie was looking down at her cucumber sandwich and asked her mom, "We can get some groceries tomorrow, right?"

"Sure. You can even take the jeep and get them yourself." Grinning she added, "I just love having a teenager."

-o-o-o-o-o-

Babineaux's general store was a wooden building with peeling cream paint and a square façade that hid the pitch of the rusting tin roof behind it. It had two antique gas pumps in front, the kind with hand cranks. Josie walked around them with a grin as her fingers ran over the dusty glass. On the front window, near the WIC and beer signs, was a handwritten note that read, "Sorry, no gas here. Go to Scotty's. One mile down the road. On the Left." Under the windows there were boxes of fresh produce, with the names of the fruit or vegetable, the growers' names, and prices handwritten on small chalkboards. A set of cracked cement steps led up to the screen doors that snapped shut behind her on their spring hinges. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloom of the interior. There were three aisles. Their shoulder-high wooden shelves crammed with everything from canned goods to rubber boots. At the far end of the store was the counter with a cash register and glass jars of candy and beef jerky. Behind it stood a squatty little woman with long gray hair. She looked up from her novel when the bells on the door jangled. "Good morning," she called out, with a smile. "Are you one of the Breauxs who just moved in down Jade Moreau Road?"

She was taken slightly aback by the fact that the woman already knew who she was, "Um, yeah, I'm Josie; my mom and I got here yesterday. Are you the owner?" She gestured around the store.

"You better believe it," the lady said. "Been running this place for fifty-two years last March; ten of those after my husband passed. If there's anything I can help you find, you just ask, Josie."

There weren't carts, so she took two baskets from the stack near the door and started on her list. She hadn't expected to be able to find all the things she'd planned to get there, but the store was surprisingly well stocked. First, she went back outside and picked her fruit and vegetables, then started on her dry goods. When it was time to get her frozen goods, though, she needed to put those baskets down at the counter and grab another one. "Find everything okay?" Mrs. Babineaux asked as she made her way back again.

"Yes, ma'am, I didn't know you could pack so much into such a small store," she said, digging in her pocket for her wallet. Suddenly it dawned on her how rude that may have sounded, and she blushed brightly, flustering, "I'm so sorry. I mean, it's a very, very nice store. I like it."

Mrs. Babineaux laughed, her second chin wagging, "Small stores fit in small towns. The nearest big store is in Gueydan. It's a bit of a drive, though, and anything you want from there we can order here. Save you the trip." Josie tried to remember which town was Gueydan, but all the places she'd passed through in the last week seemed to blend together. Even with the understanding that it was "a bit of a drive" to the next big store, it fascinated her that Babineaux's carried things like bolts of fabric, plates, and percolators.

"Hey, my mom wanted to ask if you'd like to come to this party we're throwing on Friday," Josie remembered, pulling out the folded pink flyer from her pocket. "Sorry it's wrinkled."

Mrs. Babineaux pulled her reading glasses down onto her eyes and squinted at it with a grin, "Brenda always liked a good party; you can count me in if you need reservations. Can I bring something?"

"Folding chairs, if you've got them," Josie said with a smile. "We'll get the food, though."

"I see that," Mrs. Babineaux chuckled as Josie adjusted the bags on her arms.

After she'd put away all the groceries, she changed into some shorts and went outside to stretch. The sun had already started to set, which cooled the air off minutely. It was still so heavy with humidity that it felt more like she was swimming through it than running. The gravel road was sloped at the sides and after a couple near falls, learned that she ought to stay to the center of it. She ran until the road narrowed into a small footpath blocked off by a gate. The path veered right and into dense woods, and part of her wanted very much to jump the barricade and explore. Her mom had warned her though, that people in the area enforced "no trespassing" laws with shotguns. Pushing her curiosity back down, she jumped on her toes a few times then started back down the road. The Dropkick Murphys blared through her headphones and she fell into the cadence. Just before she got home, she slowed down to look at the huge Acadian-style farmhouse next door. Perhaps "next door" was an overstatement, there was about quarter mile of thick woods between them, but it was her nearest neighbor. The house was at the end of a long, oak lined driveway, but she could see that it had a wide porch, with stairs up one side, leading to the attic. Its pillars were red brick, which contrasted with the white plaster of its walls. Near the road was a large wrought iron gate that looked like a large oak tree that split down the middle, where it closed.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Even though Maw-Maw wasn't able to go to the barbeque due to a bout of the shingles, Aunt Susan arrived just before lunch with Natalie, Sean, and a huge box of fried chicken and sides. Sean was a year younger than Josie, with his sister's sandy hair and the family freckles. His body seemed bent into a perpetual slouch under the pull of gravity, like a plant that had grown too quickly. When they were little, the family used to laugh and call them "The Steps." With Josie and Sean's growth spurts leaving Natalie behind though, they looked a bit backward as of late.

Aunt Susan looked a good deal like her sister, with dark auburn hair and a profusion of freckles. Unlike her mother's playfulness, though, Aunt Susan had a quiet sweetness that Josie admired, despite the fact she could never imitate it. Her aunt giggled like a little girl when she hugged them, and scolded her sister gently when she said they shouldn't have worried about bringing lunch.

"Hey where's Uncle Mack?" Josie asked.

"Aw, they called him offshore last night," Aunt Susan sighed, "Twenty one and seven, makes it kind of hard to plan anything most of the month."

Natalie locked arms with Josie, "Alright, let's see what you've done with that shoebox you call a room."

Sean was leaning against the wall, and had been silent until their mothers walked out onto the deck. "So you going to Foster High in August?" he called after them, causing both girls to stop and turn around.

Josie bit back a laugh at how much deeper his voice had gotten, "Nah, I've always done homeschooling before. Why go just for senior year?"

He scoffed, "Because it's senior year. It's like joining a company as the CEO."

"And being homeschooled is like not having to wear a suit and tie and deal with corporate bull all day," Josie said as she plopped herself onto the sofa and kicked her feet up on the coffee table.

"Point for Josie," Natalie said, sighing as she resigned herself to going into the kitchen and helping herself to a glass of juice. "Hey, you know who all's coming?"

Josie shrugged, "No clue, Mom's got fliers all over town, though."

"And everybody likes free food," Sean said as he walked to the kitchen table, "speaking of, don't you girls want lunch?" He grabbed a paper plate and filled it with chicken and sides.

"Nah," Josie said, "barbeque's going to be ready at three anyway."

"No way," Sean said with a mouth full of chicken, "you did not turn into one of those girls."

"What girls?" Josie laughed.

In a mock prissy voice he said, "Oh my gawd, I totally ate a grape. I'm gonna have to do like twelve billion crunches to work it off." In his normal voice he added, "Cause if you are, it isn't working."

Natalie slapped him so hard in the back of his head that he choked on a bite of rice dressing.

"Ow, jeez!" he said rubbing his head. "All I meant was she doesn't look like a bean pole."

"You're one to talk about bean poles, skinny."

"And I'm eating," he made a stupid face at her. "Hey, Jo, you got that scrapbook handy?"

Josie had started her scrapbook when she was twelve. The once small work had become so huge she had to trade out the standard sized screws that had once held the book together for longer ones to hold the extra bulk. It was roughly the size of a library edition of Webster's Dictionary. Inside were photos of all the places she'd lived and the friends she'd made along the way, along with ticket stubs, flattened soda caps from China and India, and headlines of major world events clipped out of newspapers in languages Josie could barely comprehend. Some of the pages buckled because the things held between them were a little too large for standard scrapbook fare; like the little band of worry dolls she'd collected who vaguely resembled people she knew, or the tufts of sheep's wool she'd gotten from Australia when her mom did a series of photos on ranching in the outback.

When he was done eating, she brought it out to him, setting it with a slight thud on the kitchen table. "It must be pretty boring coming back here after everything you've seen," he said after flipping through a few pages.

Josie shook her head. Even though she'd been born in Louisiana, she hadn't spent enough time there that it had become commonplace. On the contrary, she was looking forward to being able to explore the area, especially if it meant finding an alligator out in the wild.

People started trickling in around three o'clock. There were significantly less people there than at their last barbeque, but it was still a crowd, especially in the small house. Little kids were running around the back lawn with the huge bubble wands. Ms. Breaux was chatting with several of the women about the local farmers' market and whether or not they thought she'd have time to put in a late spring garden. Sean spotted some of his friends from school, and left, but Natalie stuck with Josie, introducing her to the people. Everyone seemed sweet, but Josie got the feeling that a lot of them were just there to see what Brenda Breaux had done with her life. Her mom, though, didn't seem to mind, as she got reacquainted with the people she'd grown up around.

As Natalie and Josie walked down the back steps towards a crowd sitting in folding chairs beneath the house, Josie spotted a dark gray, wolfish-looking dog tied to one of the pillars, his muzzle rested on his front legs. She jumped back, crushing Natalie's toe, "Oh, I'm so sorry!" she gasped, regaining her balance.

Despite wincing, Natalie said, "No problem. He's kind of shocking, I suppose."

A middle aged woman with her long hair pulled back in a ponytail smiled, "Oh he's perfectly friendly." Getting up she walked over to him and rubbed him affectionately behind the ears, "You're just Mommy's big baby; aren't you, Thorne?" Standing back up she hugged Natalie, "Is this your cousin? Josephine?"

Josie smiled, nodding. "Josie actually," she said holding out her hand.

"How sweet!" she said. Josie flinched as she received a small, electric shock when their hands touched. "My name is Miriam, I live next door, or as 'next door' as one can live out in the woods." Her smile was warm and made her whole face seem to glow with a youth that her salt and pepper hair seemed to contradict.

"Oh in the big house, with the tree gate?"

She nodded, smiling sweetly, "That would be me. You ought to come over one day, honey. I have a swimming pool."

"Thanks, I may do that," Josie said, willing herself not to look down at the fearsome looking wolf.

"Are you afraid of dogs?" Natalie whispered as they sat down under the front stairs.

"Dogs? No. Wolves? Yes."

"Oh, he's bound to only be part wolf. You can't have pure-bred wolves in Louisiana."

Josie gave a mirthless chuckle, "Very comforting."

"Well, technically all dogs come from wolves anyway," Natalie said with an air of practicality.

"True, but it's not every day you hear of a pack of Chihuahuas taking down a moose."

"Touché," she admitted, grinning at her cousin.

The next Tuesday, while her mom was at work, Natalie drove to meet Josie. "Hey, did you know the bayou runs behind your house?" she asked as she got out the car.

"Sure, I went out there the third day we were here. How'd you know?"

"Google Earth," she said sheepishly; then added with a chuckle, "Hey don't judge; I was bored. So you want to go swimming? I brought my suit and a towel."

"Aren't there alligators there?" It wasn't that she didn't want to see an alligator, but there was a world of difference between seeing one in the wild and putting yourself in their feeding ground.

"Yeah, but I don't know anyone who's ever been bitten," she said flippantly as she started up the stairs.

A half hour later they were trudging through the woods towards the bayou that was about a quarter mile behind her house. The trees grew slightly further apart as they got to the water, but the palmettos were so thick that they could barely see the tiny footpath they were following. Finally there was the glow of a clearing where the bayou cut through the woods and the sun reflected off the brown water. Josie could see a wooden dock stretch out into the bayou. "I wonder if Mom knew this was here when she rented the house?"

"Probably," Natalie said, shedding her clothes so that she was standing in a flowered one piece bathing suit that looked as though it came from the mid-nineties.

For as much as she usually dressed down, Josie was very aware of the fact puberty had been kind to her and hadn't owned a one piece since she was 14. Sliding out of her clothes she felt a twinge of guilt at her satisfaction in the fact that even if her cousin had the prettier face, she had the nicer body. The only thing she didn't particularly like was the red birthmark, right in the center her chest. When she was younger, her mom had told her it was because her heart was so strong it showed through. She'd planned for the last several years to get it covered over with a tattoo as soon as she turned 18. Maybe a bouquet of exotic flowers.

Natalie slid off the side of the dock into the water, but with a laugh Josie ran down the middle of the dock and jumped off. She didn't bother trying to open her eyes until she felt herself surface again, then swam against the lazy current to meet her cousin.

"You're crazy, you know that. What if the water had been shallow?"

"Oh, come on, they wouldn't have a dock somewhere too shallow to bring a boat in, right?" The truth was, she hadn't really thought about it, but knew that if she'd stood on the dock looking around for alligators and thinking about what was lurking in the water, she could have talked herself right out of getting in at all. "It's chillier than a pool, but I like it."

"Yeah, it's pretty nice, I guess," Natalie admitted, "but we ought to take Miriam up on that offer to borrow her pool, too. I've never been to her house, but she's always super sweet when I run into her in town."

"We ought to bring our fishing poles next time," Josie said, making a mental note to get her fishing license as soon as possible.

"I bet the catfish are really good here; there may be gar too. I caught a four foot long alligator gar last summer."

"Alligator what?!?" Josie sputtered, almost going under the water.

"Gar; you know, the fish. Kind of look like barracudas," Natalie laughed at her expression. "They're scary looking, but I don't know anyone who's been bit by one of those either... At least, not while they were swimming."

"That's slightly reassuring."

Natalie pulled herself up onto the dock and Josie followed suit. "Come on, you went to the Amazon. I mean, I've never been, but I've seen the travel shows; there's some crazy stuff down there."

"True, but I didn't actually swim in the river."

Her cousin looked at her in shock, "Why not? I don't think I could have gone all that way and not swum in there. It seems like it would just connect you with the whole rain forest."

Josie laughed, "Yeah, nothing says 'one with nature' like becoming part of the food chain! It was really pretty, though. You ought to go down there sometime, you'd love it."

They talked and laughed about that and the atrocious ways boy bands styled their hair and how, if given the choice, they would definitely have lived in California in the 1960's. When they got back to the house, Natalie called Aunt Susan to ask if it would be okay for her to spend the night and spent the rest of the afternoon watching old movies on Josie's laptop and listening to vinyl records. When Ms. Breaux made it home, they had already finished cooking chicken teriyaki, brown rice, and vegetables for supper and were unloading the last of the kitchen boxes. "Hey, are you spending the night?" she asked as she set up her laptop and camera and started downloading images.

"If that's okay?" Natalie asked.

"People who cook are always welcomed," Ms. Breaux said with a chuckle as she hugged her niece around the shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

Josie was about to go to sleep that night when her text alert went off. She fumbled around for the phone; she rubbed her eyes to adjust to the glare. "Ty: How's LA, Cajun Queen?"

She couldn't help smiling as she responded, "Swam with gators today. Will send pics tomorrow. How's military life?"

"U know. Where I go fun follows."

"Yeah, it does. I'm about to fall asleep on you now, though. Good night, silly boy."

"Night, gorgeous."

She couldn't be sure, but she would have bet she was blushing as she laid the phone back and curled up in her quilt. It was so wrong, holding on when she should have let go. At first it had all been about distance, but now he was stationed a hundred or so miles away at Fort Polk. There were things about her life he would never, could never, understand.