"I'm leaving in two days. You know that, right? You'll be on your own for this."

Minn looked at her brother, took in his concerned expression and rolled her eyes. They were standing in her living room, in front of the long window, summer sunlight pouring in. Outside, a few children played on scooters, and a young woman walked a dog. Everything was so . . . so peaceful, and yet, Minn hadn't been this nervous in months, not since all of it had first come to her thoughts. "I'm a big girl, Wolf! I'll be fine. We'll be fine. I have everything ready, and believe me, I've jumped through so many hoops I feel like one of those circus dogs. You know, the little ones that—oh, nevermind. Just trust me, ok?"

Wolf chewed his lower lip. "You've definitely seemed happier, lately. I haven't heard you mention . . . What I mean is, you haven't talked about Peter coming home, not for a while." He took her hands, and Minn let him, though she huffed a little. "Hey, it's all right. I know we don't really discuss it. But I'm glad that you seem to have moved on, Minn, that you've forgiven yourself."

She pulled her hands from his. "Let's not, ok?"

"You know, it brought awareness to the Ames Bridge. It's terrible for black ice. There're multiple signs now, and that's thanks to—"

"Stop." Minn forced a smile, but there was a warning in it. She'd been forcing smiles for weeks, now, but soon she could go back to being her surly self. "I don't want to talk about it."

The man pushed his long hair from his face. "Right. Well. You got some coffee?"

"For you? Always."

The woman made her way to the kitchen, retrieved a mug in the shape of an owl and placed it next to her own plain blue one. She filled Wolf's and refilled her own, asking him through the open wall whether he still took it with cream, "like a loser," she added teasingly. Her brother suggested they sit out back on the patio, and Minn happily obliged. It was July, but the air had cooled after the previous night's storm, and though the humidity hung heavy, it was tolerable.

"You see my flowers?" Minn waved toward a garden bed across the way, opposite the patio. "I won't bother naming them for you; I know you wouldn't care."

Wolf settled into a wrought-iron chair, placed his mug on the glass-topped round table, and looked out approvingly over the small yard. It was a mere rectangle of space, made into its own close little world within the tall privacy fencing. When Minn had first moved in, it'd been nothing more than a plot of dying grass, but she'd brought some life to it over the years. It was no botanical garden, but it was well-kept, and the flowers she'd planted brought happy color during the spring and summer, a small rainbow against the dark brown mulch of the beds and the bright green of the lawn.

"I'm glad you've kept it up."

Minn warmed, though not so much from her brother's comment. Isaac would be enjoying it, soon enough. It was why she'd kept up anything at all. The boy had given her purpose. If she'd not met him . . . she didn't want to think about where she'd be.

"Reminds me of when we were kids," Wolf interrupted her thoughts. He sat back, put up one leg on top of the other, ankle-to-knee, and exhaled a relaxed breath. "The family had a yard, remember? It was really overgrown, though. Our shed was back there."

"Of course I remember our secret shed. It's one of my favorite memories. That and running through the corn."

"Oh my God, you were always getting lost in there. I'd have to yell your name a hundred times. It'd piss me off cause you'd hide on purpose."

"I did? No I didn't. I wouldn't do that."

"You absolutely did!" Wolf snorted. "You were such a little shit. You knew the grown ups would yell at me if I lost you, so you did it on purpose."

Feigning offense, Minn placed a hand daintily against her chest. "Me? I don't think I would do such a thing!"

"Don't play. You're not half as innocent as you look."

The two shared a laugh, and in that moment, Minn felt a surge of what she could almost call peace. Not so long ago, she'd been sure there was no chance at contentment, ever again. And perhaps, when she thought a little too long, moved a bit beneath the surface, the superficial satisfaction would reveal its nature, but so long as she kept that division, the one that separated the reality of others from the truth she told herself, she'd manage.

A calm had fallen across the two. They sipped their coffee and enjoyed one another's presence, the balmy morning atmosphere and shade of the trees overhead. "You ever think about our family?" Wolf asked, his words mildly surprising his sister.

"I have a hard time remembering much," she admitted. "Why? Do you think about them?"

Wolf's nostrils flared. He scratched his stubbly chin. A sudden jolt struck Minn, an image of Peter pointing out his incoming facial hair, grinning, claiming playfully that he was going to be grown and moved out, soon, and she, mimicking sorrow, asking where her little baby boy had gone . . .

"Sometimes, like where they came from," Wolf went on, missing the emotion flicker through his sister.

She reset herself. "They were just weird people. Living off the grid and all."

"Yeah, but, they came from somewhere."

"We all come from somewhere."

"Minn," Wolf pushed, a slight peevishness in his words, "I did all that ancestry stuff, you know."

"What, where you send in your spit and they tell you you're European?"

Huffing a bit indignantly, Wolf leaned forward, toward his sister. "They tell you a little more than that. We've got a lot of Germanic blood in us."

"I'm not sure how useful it is to know that. And I thought you didn't even want us looking into our parents."

Wolf nodded absently. "Yeah, yeah. I just wondered, you know? They were really different. And once, I remember—I have this really vague memory—of mom telling me something, about how they'd used to live in the mountains, and they'd moved because they they didn't like where they were, but after they moved they didn't really know how to get along properly, so they kind of just stuck together in their strange freelove enclave or whatever . . . this is boring you, isn't it?"

"No!" Minn lied. She was a bad liar, when it came to fooling anyone other than herself. "Yes. Kind of. Sorry. We just, we already know our parents were weird. It's all past, wherever they came from. It just doesn't matter."

"Right, no. I—I guess not." Wolf pondered his remaining coffee, then did a one-eighty. "You like Shannon?"

Keeping her gaze at the flowers beyond, Minn considered how to respond. "Honestly? She's . . . I think she's all right. I actually like her in a lot of ways. She speaks her mind. And she's always been friendly to me."

"She talks too much, sometimes."

Minn laughed. "Maybe you can compete with each other."

"Right, right. But you—you don't hate her?"

"Of course not."

"Then what is it?" Wolf caught on. "I can tell there's something you aren't saying."

Minn had been so wrapped up in her own life, with finishing the school year and simultaneously working through everything necessary to bring in Isaac, with shutting out everyone who asked her questions she didn't want to answer and convincing herself that everything was going to be just fine, that she'd really quite forgotten her brother's apparent interest in making things official with Shannon. She'd kept the information somewhere in the back of her thoughts, but she'd left it there.

"Truth?" she asked.

"Always," he answered.

Minn turned to him. "I just never saw you as the marrying type, that's all."

Her comment hung over the table, neither of them caring to address it further. They both went back to their drinks, to staring off into the yard and making banal comments about the neighborhood and their jobs and the barking dog one yard over. And when enough time had passed and the coffee was either cold or gone, they rose. Wolf stretched his arms high over his head and looked to Minn, asked her for a hug, and she obliged.

"I really wish you weren't doing this," he said over the top of her head, which was nestled on his shoulder. "I wish you weren't taking in this kid."

She'd heard it enough times over the past weeks, and yet even though she'd often deferred to her brother, Minn hadn't given in on this one. She was determined. "I know how you feel, Wolf. But we'll be fine."

He pulled away, held her at arm's length. A strange expression moved across his features, pulled at the corners of his mouth, drew down his brow, as if he were uncertain whether to smile or frown. "I'll miss you, but I'll be back, all right?"

"I know, dummy," Minn played. Why was he being so serious?

"Hey, I love you, ok? I mean it."

"All right, all right! I know. I love you too."

Awkwardly then, Wolf leaned in as if to give her a kiss, and as she assumed it was meant for her cheek, she turned slightly, but Wolf somehow found his way to her mouth, stayed there just a bit too long for comfort, before he then stepped past her and into the house. Minn stood there for a moment, a little perplexed, some intuition attempting to tell her that what'd just happened was odd, that it'd happened before, in a spooky field of corn between two neglected children, at a chilly rest stop between two wayward teens. But her presence of mind wouldn't allow the feeling to linger. Minn knew her thoughts often played tricks. Her memories were often inaccurate, and they weren't worth dwelling on.

Shaking her head, Minn straightened the chairs, placed them at an angle that pleased her, and perfunctorily walked the perimeter of her yard, looking at new buds and pulling up a weed here and there. By the time she went inside, Wolf was long gone.

April, May, and June had passed in a flurry. Once she'd started down the road to taking in Isaac, she'd aimed all her energy in that one direction. She'd hardly been able to teach those last two months, gave the students independent projects, graded on effort and let the rest go. It was only art, after all. And though Isaac had been slated to return to school after a few weeks, Circle Ridge had decided to have him finish out the year online, keep him there. He'd been frustrated by that, but Minn had known it was for the best and fortunately been able to convince him of it. Had he been free to leave the premises, he might have gotten himself into more trouble, and that would certainly have put a kink into his foster application process. Also, Minn had known that having him at the high school would've been a distraction to her. She'd already become so mentally removed from her work that to have the source of that preoccupation present would've made everything all the more difficult. No, best to start fresh in the fall, after they'd had time to acclimate to one another, Isaac to her home and she to her new child.

Minn plopped onto her leather couch, recalling how Isaac had looked sleeping there, the morning after their night in that trailer park. Her cat leapt up onto her lap, and she nuzzled him under his ears. "Beetle, my baby. You're going to get yourself a new buddy," she added, rubbing her chin atop the cat's head. "Don't you listen to Wolfie. You're going to love Isaac. He's just like our Peter. Almost exactly the same."