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hitches higher, as though there is once again a fog of smoke crowding out the oxygen in my lungs, heat rushing up the sides of my face, so intense it wants to melt me, consume me, cut straight to the bones and reduce me to ash. Colors lick at my vision—the bright yellow of candlelight, Marly ’s eager face of thirteen years ago straining toward me.
    Marly finds me folded in a forward crouch gasping, my muscles locked up. “Oh Honey.” Her fingertips rest briefly on my back before she pulls them away. “I didn’t think. Can you forgive me?”
    I nod but don ’t raise my head. A memory of heat on my skin, my own shrill keening... I can smell the egg-like odor of burning hair. Marly puts her hand on my chin and tilts it up, like a lover about to kiss me.
    “ I thought I’d put it behind me,” I manage.
    She pulls her hand away quickly. Her eyes are wet. “Nobody puts something like that behind them.”
    The weeds feel soft as I sink into them and fold my hands in my lap, tucking my thumbs in my palms. She sits down beside me; she is wearing leggings, bright purple, under her soft jersey dress, just like when we were girls.
    “Grace, for years I had nightmares. The wake up screaming kind.”
    I look at her gorgeous, unblemished face, her eyes imploring. I believe her. In a strange way it helps.
    “But I’m a coward. I know that even my worst nightmare is nothing compared to what you went through. Even if your mother hadn’t warned me away, I didn’t think I could look you in the eye. I’m a coward. That’s the whole reason I never called or wrote.”
    I take a deep breath. “I wish you’d found a way. I needed you.”
    “ I know.” She looks at me meaningfully as though she’s about to say more, then leaps up off the ground so effortlessly I am breathless at the thought of such freedom. I lean unsteadily forward and begin to ease myself upwards, my right leg protesting at the sudden expansion from sitting to standing. I’m too proud to ask for help. Marly watches me, her hand twitches and lifts off her thigh as if she is going to offer it to me anyway, but she must see the determination in my face because she lowers it again. Before I gain my balance, she puts out her arms. I am not getting through to her about the pain that touch causes me.
    “ I’m so glad you’re here, Grace. I really missed you. I’ll be gentle, I promise.” The look on her face is so plaintive that I lean in for a brief moment and let her enclose me.
    She smells like jasmine and cigarette smoke. Lights dance behind my eyes and as uncomfortable as it is to be clutched in her embrace, it is also the first time in ages that someone has hugged me in a way that doesn ’t feel obligatory or careful. An image forms in my mind’s eye, that of a man jogging on a tree-lined path, like a fragment of a dream you suddenly remember without context. Something about this makes me shiver and pull back quickly.
    “ Stay here,” she says.
    “ Why?” But she is already gone, racing off to the back of the house. When she returns she dangles a large ax in one hand, swinging it back and forth perilously close to her tanned thigh.
    “ What are you doing?” But as soon as I ask it I know. “Marly, you can’t chop down an enormous tree with that! You need a chainsaw at least.”
    She bites her lip as she hefts it over her head. “I know. But we can hack away some of the evidence.”
    She bee-lines to the tree that was witness to my awful transformation and swings the ax into the charred spots, making jagged little bite marks.
    I watch, fascinated.
    “ Come on, Grace!” She pulls back again, and the ax makes a satisfying thunk into the flesh of the tree. “It feels good,” she says. “Really. Better than therapy, and I should know—I spent years in it.” She swings again and again as if the tree has taken something from her, too.
    I come closer but refuse the ax when she hands it to me. “Marly, I can’t.”
    “ Sure you can. You’re