Traveling to Germany posed several problems.

Sally and Lavinia did both have passports, Sally from family trips to China, Lavinia from her varied travels. But their passports, both just shy of expiring, were back in the Central Valley town where they had met. Sally had sublet her apartment; Lavinia continued to pay rent for nothing (“but you can live with me there eventually, you wanna.”)

Sally could have gotten an emergency passport in San Francisco but the clerk who “helped” them later that day recognized Lavinia from newscasts and informed her, with the special smirk of the elderly civil servant, that Lavinia couldn’t have an emergency passport because she was dead. They would have to drive up the Central Valley just to get their passports.

A bigger problem was that they had both quit their jobs when they started traveling together. They lived for now on savings; between them they had about the price of a BART ticket to Fremont.

“Dear one,” said Jesse at the maple wood table in his and Walter’s kitchen, “You don’t have to do this alone. You have friends and supporters. Ask for help.”

He quietly repeated, “Ask for help” while looking at his husband, who was communing with Lavinia like trees in the morning sun. Sally, sipping her green tea, and stroking the maple wood with new awareness, saw the trace of sadness and worry again. She understood vaguely that he would like to talk about it but she had never in her life been anyone’s confidante and had no idea what to say.

Walter said matter-of-factly, “We should all go to this place in Germany. I’ve seen it too, you know, but I’ve never been out of the States so I didn’t know where it was.”

Does everyone know about this? Jesse nodded thoughtfully, so he knew too. She must have imagined the worried look; Walter was closer with Jesse than she was with Lavinia: he’d told her his vision right away. She ached at the wistful longing with which Lavinia looked at Walter. She wasn’t worried Lavinia might have sex with Walter: she’d only once in her life done it with what she called “the X-chromosome impaired.” And she’d promised.

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No, it was the same wistful longing with which she’d touched trees and called them brothers and sisters. I’m worried that my wife will leave me to become a tree with a man. Jesus, it sounds silly when I even think it.

It seemed even sillier later as they lay entwined in Jesse and Walter’s guest room. The pleasure that exploded when she let her eyes lock with Lavinia’s was as exhilarating as a snowfall she had once been caught in. She’d never known she could be this happy; she should just confess her worries to Lavinia so they could laugh together.

But not yet. Time later to talk about that and about the council of war Jesse planned for next week after she and Lavinia got their passports. Time later to fret that Charla would be there, and Malcolm, who had killed her sister, and that kid Jeremy if Sister Amanda could find out what had happened to him. Besides, she had asked Lavinia if she was thinking of going “that way” and Lavinia had said no.

For now, she leaned back on her elbows as Lavinia’s dark head, gleaming faintly from moonlight through the high window, trailed kisses closer and closer to her sex. On the advice of a self-help book, Sally had once looked at her vagina in a mirror; she knew the pleasing sight which that delicate ring of pink around the darker core would present to her love.

As Lavinia began to kiss and tongue her, Sally flung her head back.

KerriAnne’s ghostly face in the high window looked hungrily in at her.

“Yaaah!” Sally yelled. Lavinia jerked upright.

“What, what, tiger?!”

The window was, of course, empty.

Don’t wait weeks to tell her something that might be important. “Did you just see my sister?” she demanded, more roughly than she intended.

But Lavinia shook her head with sad sympathy and Sally, heart still pounding, realized that the vision must have been guilt playing out. KerriAnne was dead and her body had been consumed and she had shoved away the tangle of feelings about that whole mess.

But there was one especially sad reason it couldn’t have been real: for the only time in the last ten years, KerriAnne had looked unreservedly happy.

♦

In the next room, Jesse thought about Sally’s red-faced tale of seeing a little fairy. She told Lavinia about it right away.

Before his dancing mind could stifle itself, he pushed out the words, “Lambchop, I have something to talk to you about.”

Walter took his hand and looked at him encouragingly, though with that tenseness with which any lover greets words like that. Jesse still didn’t know how to start. But at least now he had to say something.