“We have new people,” announces Sloan one morning, as January fades away, and Ava looks up at her in surprise.  “What?”

She’s got a cup of coffee in her hands, holding it close to her face so she can feel the warmth, and she looks cute.  But we both look over at Sloan when she says it, and she smiles.  “Alicia found some kids, hiding out in an abandoned warehouse.  They’re pretty young.  We’re gonna put them in a tent near yours.”

“Alright,” says Ava, taking a sip of her coffee, and then I say, “Jimmy.”

Alicia has come to the western fire forum, and a boy peeks over her shoulder.  His eyes widen when he sees me, and Ava looks at me, and Sloan looks at me, and Nua looks at me, and Jimmy looks at me.  I stand and I go to him, and he hugs me tight.

“Are you alright?” I murmur, and he nods, putting his head on my shoulder.  “You know him?” asks Alicia, and I nod.  “He was at my shelter.”

“Ah,” says Ava quietly, and I look at her.  She raises her eyebrows, and looks to Jimmy, and I see that he’s staring at her.

“It’s alright,” I say quietly, realizing.  He remembers her from the shelter, when Miss Lilly took us away, when Ava came in afterwards to look at us, and then she chose me.  “Come on, let’s get you set up.”

And so Sloan and I put Jimmy in a tent.  There’s another kid, too, but I don’t know him, he went to go see Alis for a nasty cut on his leg.  Jimmy is only fifteen.  He came to us when he was fourteen, and threw his wedding ring away as soon as he could.  And now I have one on my finger, that I don’t want to take off.

I explain it to him, as we walk to his tent.  I explain to him Ava.  I tell him it’ll be all right.  Everything will be alright, now that we’re here.  I wonder where everyone else from the shelter went.  It’s surprising he’s the first person I’ve found, now that I think about it.  But we are pretty far away from home, they might have found another safe place.  Jimmy tells me that Miss Lilly put him and the rest of the underage boys in an agency after Ava didn’t pick them.  He and the other boy, whose name is Sina, managed to get out.  They hid in the warehouse for a while, and it’s a place where Alicia and Sigrid’s other women often goes to try and find work.  They hid from her the first few times she came, but eventually they figured it out, and asked for help.

Sina comes into Jimmy’s tent as he tells me the story, and sits on the mat, holding his new lantern in his lap.  He’s older than Jimmy, probably around my age.  He stares at my hand the whole time Jimmy talks, resting on my knee, and when I look over to him to ask if he’s hungry, he says, “Why are you still wearing it?”

“You married that woman,” says Jimmy quietly, reaching out to touch my hand.  “The one who raided your home.”

“Her mother raided my home,” I correct him gently.  “She, she’s not, she’s not bad.  She came here, to be with her brother, and she sent back for us.  She’s been helping us.”

Sina does not look like he believes me, but I ask him again if he’s hungry, and this time he nods.

I meet Ava and Alis at the supply room, and she looks at me.  I collect take-out boxes for the boys, and she says, “Are they alright?”

“He remembers you,” I say softly, and she grimaces.  I laugh a little.  “It’s alright.  They’re alright.  They ran away from an agency.”

“Oh,” says Ava, looking up at me, and I shrug.  “Sina, the older one, he wasn’t one of ours.  He met Jimmy there and they ran away.  But that means that your mother did put them somewhere, at least, right?  She didn’t give them back to their wives.”

“Yeah,” says Ava, twisting her lips.  “An agency, though.”

“What’s worse?”

She looks at me.  I think of Keol.  We’re quiet for a moment, and then I go to give the food to Jimmy and Sina.  

I stay with them for a little while, to tell them how things work.  I tell them to talk to Haywood.  A train goes by above us, rattling the tunnel and they both jump, and then Sina yawns.  I smile a little.  “Get some rest,” I say quietly.  “You’re safe here.  I promise.”

“Are you?” Jimmy asks me, and I smile a little, touching my wedding ring.  “Yes.”

I leave them alone in their tents, and go back to the supply room.  No one’s there anymore, but Ava and Nua and Penny and Bayan are congregated in the map room when I walk by, and Haywood is there, too.  I go in.  “Hey.”

“Hey,” he says with a grin.  “I wanted to talk to you, that’s why we’re all here.”

“About what?” I ask, and he takes a deep breath, and then says, “Your sister’s living with your mother-in-law.”

Ava’s examining her nails, but she looks up when he says this, and says, “What?”

“Abigala’s living in the beach house,” says Haywood.  “She’s moved in.”

“Why?” asks Penny, and Haywood shrugs.  Penny’s fists clench, and then he loosens them.  “Of course.”

“What do you mean?” says Nua, and Penny just shakes his head.  “Everything’s working out for her, isn’t it, everything’s perfect.”

“No,” I say incredulously, and Penny just scoffs.  Ava says, “Penny.”

“No,” says Penny, shaking his head, not looking at her.  “It’s all been perfect for you, too, so just don’t.”

“It’s been perfect for me?” says Ava in disbelief, and Penny makes a noise, taking the rubber band out of his long hair and running his fingers through it.  “Fine, whatever, but first it was you, and now it’s Abigala, and everything is just going to work out fine for everyone, isn’t it?”

“Alright,” says Haywood, rising to his feet.  “Family matter.”

He leaves.  No one says anything for a moment; it’s just me and Bayan and Nua, watching Ava and Penny.  He has his eyes closed, he’s squeezing them shut, and then he opens them and shakes his head.  He rubs his lips together, and says softly, “Abigala Ahman’s going to get everything she’s ever wanted, and our mother’s found someone new to love.”

“This isn’t about Abigala,” says Ava after a moment, looking at her brother.  “So what is it, Penny?  What do you want me to do, admit that she loved me more?  You want me to admit that you had it worse?”

“No,” says Penny, “but I mean, I did.”

“She raped my husbands,” says Ava quietly.  “She let them die.”

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“Yeah, your husbands,” says Penny in disgust, still not looking at her.  “Not you.  You’re fine.  She did it all to your boys.  And I was a husband, everything she did to them someone else did to me, and she let it happen, she made it happen.”

“She did it because of me,” says Ava, her voice rising.  “You think I don’t know that, you think I don’t have to live with that, every single fucking day, and they don’t get to live at all anymore?”

“Yeah, because she would have killed for you!” yells Penny, finally whirling around to face her.  “She probably has!  She just gave me away!”

“Listen, I never asked to get brought back to life with my dead husband’s heart, okay?” says Ava, and Penny winces.  “Come on, Ava.”

“No,” she says.  “I said no.  I never wanted transplants.  That’s why she had to wait until I was literally dead before she could step in and next-of-kin it through.”

Penny stares at her, and she shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes.  “I shouldn’t be here,” she says, her voice quiet now.  “I don’t want to be here.  It’s not how it’s supposed to be, it’s not how people are supposed to live.”

Penny takes a step towards her, reaching out his hands, but she pulls away.  “She doesn’t care about what we want, she doesn’t care about us.”  She shakes her head again, and tears run down her cheeks.  She says, “I,” and then, “She,” and then finally she whispers, her voice breaking, “I don’t want her to love me.”

She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, and sobs, shaking her head.  “Not if this is how she shows it.”

“Ava,” says Penny softly, gently, putting his hand on her shoulder.  “I’m sorry.”

“She killed him,” gasps Ava, burying her face in her hands and sinking into a chair.  “You’re right, I’m sorry, Penny, I’m sorry, but you’re right, and I don’t know how, but she killed him, so that he could save me, and I wish it never, I wish we never, I wish I was dead, I’m supposed to be dead.”

And I pull my hand out of Nua’s and go to her, kneeling down in front of her.  She lifts up her head and looks at me, and her lower lip quivers.  She reaches out and puts her hand on my face, and I take it in my fingers.  “He loved you, Ava.”

She shakes her head again, squeezing her eyes shut.  “He shouldn’t’ve.  He shouldn’t’ve even had the chance, it wasn’t worth it.  I should’ve just left him alone.”

“Ava,” I say gently, moving a little closer to her.  “He wanted you to be happy.”

She looks at me, her eyes wide and brownish-green and full of tears.

“He wanted you to get back to Penny.”

And she pulls her hand away, shaking her head, and puts her palm against her chest, over the stitches and Keol’s heart.  “Not like this.  Neither of us wanted this.”

She stands, and I move out of her way, and she leaves.  Penny just watches her go, and after a moment he says softly, “She’s never been angry at you before, has she.”

I look up at him, still down on the ground, and he shakes his head, letting out a shaky breath.  “If my wife was yelling like that, even at someone else, I would not get down on my knees in front of her.”

“Ava’s different,” I say quietly, and he nods, running his fingers through his hair, and then presses his fists against his head.  “Aren’t you just so fucking lucky.”

And he turns, and pushes everything off the table, and it all crashes to the ground, papers and water bottles and lantern parts and tools.  Nua winces, and I move away from him in surprise, rising to my feet.  Penny seethes for a moment, not looking at us, and says, “Aren’t we all just so lucky?”

I glance at Nua, but he doesn’t seem to know what’s going on either.  Is Penny mad at us?  He shakes his head, his hair flying around his shoulders, as if he can hear our question and as if he wants to answeer.  “You know, Ava’s only alive because the love of her life is dead, and Bayan’s been a slave and a toy for fifteen years, and I’m stuck living like a fucking worm underground because otherwise I’d be abused by my wife every night, and you, you two…”

I have never heard Penny talk about his wife before.  He was only seventeen when he got married, I remember, and he only spent a few months with her, whoever she is, before running away, but he has never talked about those few months.  It’s easy to forget that anything like that had happened to him, he’s always so easy-going and cheerful and ready to take charge.  Ava’s the one who’s quiet and angry and always deep in thought, and Penny is usually the complete opposite, but now I see her in him.  Just like Ava could never let herself feel anything good lest her mother use it against her, Penny has not let himself think of anything bad for years now, probably, or else it would boil over and explode out of him, just like this.  This is no good for either of them, it’s no good for any of us.  Ava should not be alive, but she is, and Penny wishes he was dead, but he is not.  Bayan has not been allowed a voice or a will since he was a child.  And Nua and I?

“You’re here too,” Penny finally finishes, his fists clenching at his sides.  “This is how we live, because all that matters is that we live, it doesn’t matter how.”

Bayan goes to Penny and touches his hand.  After a moment he loosens his fist, and lets Bayan take his fingers in his, and I feel Nua at my elbow.  Haywood said something similar to me, months ago, when I first told him about my parents.  If this is how you have to live, in constant fear and pain, is it even worth it?

And I think of Abigala, and her four husbands, and her two children, no, her six children, god what happened, what did she do, and I can’t answer it.  I don’t know.  But I wonder what Penny thought when he first heard that Ava got married.  Did he blame her?  Was he mad?  Am I being unfair?  Abigala could be just as good as Ava.  But she could also not.  And that’s the problem, isn’t it.  I remember I asked her once, standing on the beach, how any of this was supposed to work.  How she was supposed to just push everything down, and away, and not care, and have a relationship with me and Keol at the same time, and Nua, too, if it was normal.  “How is this supposed to work?”

“Don’t think about it.”

“Don’t think about it?”

“And don’t feel it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You’re gonna have to learn.”

After a moment Bayan reaches up and touches Penny’s cheek, and then drops his hand and leaves the tent.  Nua watches him go, and then asks softly, “Should we go too?” 

Penny exhales, shaking his head, and then tilts it back.  And then he drops to his knees too, and starts to clean up the mess he made.  “Bayan’s got it.  He’s good with her.”

He’s good with everyone, I think.  He knows how to calm people down.

“He’s been helping her learn how to read again,” says Penny after a moment, and Nua looks at him, furrowing his eyebrows.  “What, really?”

“Yeah,” says Penny. 

“Why Bayan?  We could’ve helped her.”

“She didn’t want you,” says Penny simply, reaching up to put a messy stack of papers back on the table, and starts to sweep together another.  “She wanted Bayan.”

“When did Bayan even learn how to read?” mutters Nua, and I say, “Don’t get jealous.”

And Nua reaches over and slaps me on the arm, and I shrink away from him a bit, but can’t hold back a slight smile.  And Penny looks at us and smiles a little bit too, straightening up.  There are screws and parts of a lantern that Sigrid was repairing in the dirt, but Penny just puts the other papers on the table and puts his head in his hands, sighing.  Nua looks at him.  “You okay?”

“Yeah,” says Penny, and he reminds me of Ava, because he’s obviously not okay, but he doesn’t know how to say so.  He’s used to just hiding it behind jokes and a smile, and usually it works, usually it fools us.  So you can pretend like you know what you’re doing.  You can pretend like you’re fooling her all you want.  At the end of the day, we’ll both be here, and she’ll take her pick.

Miss Lilly took her pick, I realize.  From the very beginning, since they were children, since they were born, Miss Lilly has always chosen Ava.  And my parents have always chosen me.  So Penny was left behind, to be tossed out as soon as he could.  And Abigala was left behind, embittered and desperate for attention, and so she found something she could do about it, somehow.  But god, it’s not the same.  The way my parents cared about me is not the same way that Miss Lilly controls Ava.  And the way that Miss Lilly abandoned Penny is not the same way that my parents left me and Abigala.  I don’t even know how they left us.  I did not see them get taken away and I have not heard from them or even of them since.  Jimmy is safe, he is here now, but he is one of hundreds of boys I have met in my life, who have passed through my home, he was one of two dozen who were at the shelter the day that it got raided, and I don’t know where the rest are.  I know where Abigala is, though, she is with my mother-in-law, living the life that should have been Ava’s, if only Ava cared just a little bit less.  

“I shouldn’t’ve said that,” says Penny suddenly, quietly, his head still in his hands.  “God, I know what she did to Ava, she started doin’ it when I was still there, she did it with Owen first, and god, I hate it, I hate her, she tortured Ava and she used them to do it and they got tortured too and no one could do anything about it-”

“Hey,” says Nua gently, standing up.  He goes to him, and sits down next to him, and says, “You two, you can’t compare what she did to you.  Because she messed with both of your heads in different ways, on purpose.  She wanted this to happen, she wanted you to fight.”

“I know,” he whispers.

“And everything that she did,” says Nua softly, “that Ava did, after you left, it was for you.  And then for Owen, and now for Keol.  Ava knows that they were just collateral, but they shouldn’t’ve been.  She wants, she’s trying to make what happened to them mean something.”

“She’s doing it for you, now,” Penny says quietly, still muffled into his hands.  “All this shit about Abigala, Abigala’s taking over Ava’s life, she’s being the Ava that my mother wanted.”

Nua looks up at me, and for some reason I think of the day that Ava and Keol and Nua and I were all out in the pool, and Bayan came to serve us drinks.  It was before Keol started coughing, before everything started to crumble, for us at least.  For Bayan it had been years since his life had fallen apart.  “Your mom’s a bitch,” Keol told Ava when Miss Lilly called Bayan inside a few minutes after I joined them, and she just sighed and said, “I know.”  And then, weeks later, she told me how her mother had hurt Keol, and how she had hurt Owen, too, and then months after that Bayan told me she had hurt him, too.  And all of it was because of Ava.  And it’s not Ava’s fault, it’s Lilly’s.  But she still has to live with it all, thinking it’s her fault.  And now Miss Lilly has got Abigala in her grasp, too, she got her married and a mother and she’s doing the same thing.  I put my head in my hands, too, and say, “God.”

Penny looks up at me, and smiles a little, and then sighs again.  “We’ll figure it out.”

“Will we?” I ask, and he nods.  “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” says Nua, and I sigh, too.  “Yeah.”