She’s been watching age consume Mom and Dad, year by year. They had to give up the RV two months ago. Once, when she was ten, Autumn tumbled almost a dozen feet out of the tree house into the creek below. She bounced back from a broken arm like she was made of rubber. Meanwhile, Dad trips on the stairs of their RV, falls a foot, and breaks his hip—and their second-life as hippie vagabonds is over forever.

  It’ll be the same with her friends, even these ones. Again and again she’ll walk with friends and lovers to the edge of a wide river—marriage, kids, retirement, even death. One by one, she’ll watch them board a ferry for which she has no ticket. And she’ll turn back and start again, young as ever.

  Who knows what Sasha would think? Autumn stopped calling a long time ago. It’s been so long since they’ve seen each other, Autumn wouldn’t know what to do if she was faced with the sight of Sasha’s graceful aging, while Autumn is still the unchanging little scamp. The Pippi Longstocking. The impossible. No. Autumn doesn’t want to see her. There’s no way she would be able to explain. If she thinks of it too long, the sadness might choke her; Autumn doesn’t want to be sad.

  Ellis returns alone and smiles at her. Because Ellis is Ellis, their clubbing outfit is a loose knit sweater that isn’t even worn in a cool way, just in a loved way, and their hair probably hasn’t seen a comb in a year. They hand her a whiskey sour, unpolluted with glitter, and slide back into the seat beside her. “Want to not dance with me?” They’re always the one to find Autumn in the quiet moments, when the energy of the world is too much. That’s their thing: being quiet together.

  “I’ll dance later.” Autumn leans on their shoulder. Even if Autumn loves dancing, tonight she just feels a little too aged for it.

  Ellis hums an affirmative. “I can’t wait to be old enough that not dancing at a party isn’t weird. I want to be old and eat caramels and swear about ‘kids these days.’”

  “I’m old,” Autumn admits, tequila-honest and warm in the company of someone she thinks would actually believe her. “Born 1965. Too old to be here, probably.”

  Ellis laughs into her hair. “That’s the spirit, kid. Oh well. We’ll be geezers soon enough.”

  Autumn picks glitter off their shirt and settles back in against their collar. Across the floor, Chloe and the Ryans are laughing in each other’s arms. Matt’s chatting with the bartender, who has a very sexy eyebrow piercing. Ellis is warm and solid against her cheek, chasing her melancholy away. Maybe one day she’ll tell them for real.

  “I always wondered if I should tell you.”

  ***

  June 2023

  Dad’s last window is in a hospital. The leaves on the tree outside are flushed healthy and green. Nightingales made a home in the high branches, and in summer the hatchlings learn to fly, all but one, who falls to the grass on a sun-washed day.

  And Autumn, mistaken by the nurse for a granddaughter, sits at his side. She didn’t correct the nurse.

  Mom died five years ago. She and her dad are the only two left in the whole world that call each other family. It’s just age, coming for him. Nothing more sinister than that. Still, dread creeps up Autumn’s throat at night. Alone. You are one day closer to being alone.

  “I brought you cannolis from the place down the street,” Autumn tries. Some days Dad isn’t all that lucid. It’s a blessing. He doesn’t notice that his daughter, who should be fifty-seven, is too young; in his mind, everything is all right.

  Today, he is quiet, but he seems to be here. Death is not always the single cruel swing of a scythe; sometimes it takes in pieces, withdrawing senses and memories like small bills from a bank.

  And then, out of the antiseptic silence, Dad speaks. “I always wondered if I should tell you.”

  Autumn leans forward to hold his hand and try to rub warmth back into his fingers. “What was that?”

  He’s lost weight. His arms are as small as a boy’s. His whole body is small. “Used to joke you just popped out of the ground,” he murmurs. His eyelids are practically translucent, like the mother-of-pearl insides of a shell. “Autumn baby with Autumn hair and sky in your eyes…”

  “I know.” It’s the story behind her name. Her first barely red crop of baby hair had surprised her parents. Mom picked her up to examine her scalp, then looked out the window at the late-November leaves which gave the wind an auburn shape. Autumn was originally meant to be Marcia, but at the sight of that hair, Mom said there was suddenly only one name she could give her child. Autumn, for the apple-crisp cold, for pecans falling from crimson canopies. Autumn, for the season of her birth in that little pecan town. “You’ve told me that, Daddy. I love you.” Once, Autumn would say she loved him as a goodbye. Now, she says it as she breathes. Just in case.

  Dad knows Autumn loves him. He must know. Autumn has said it enough, hasn’t she?

  “Mom didn’t want to tell you. She didn’t think you needed to know.” Dad opens his eyes and they’re filmy. It may not be the good day Autumn thought. Maybe she’s— “You were so cold when he brought you to us,” he says dreamily. “Wrapped in his leather jacket. You cried so loud.”

  Autumn feels her smile freezing. She can’t help it.

  “Just a newborn…but it happened sometimes in that town. We all knew. No one talked about it, but we knew,” Dad sighs. “And god, we wanted a baby. We wanted you so much.”

  Some great, terrible awareness falls into her, rips pieces of her off and plummets through her body, far into the ground. “Dad.”

  “You were ours anyway.” His eyes are back, rolling on Autumn and away again, unable to focus. “We wanted you so, so much.”

  “Dad. What do you—what are you saying?”

  His eyes are closing again, the weight of the world too great on his fragile mind.

  “Dad. Dad!”

  “I always wondered…”

  ***

  2024

  How long has the road been closed?

  Autumn stomps on the brake, and the rented little Nissan rattles to a stop. A collection of orange cones stands between her and the only route drivable into town. At first, she can’t fathom it. Her energy is sapped from days of driving. The interior of the car smells, and so does she; she hasn’t stopped longer than a bathroom break since the state line, and she’s only been eating Cheetos and KitKat bars. Blearily, she stares through the windshield and waits for the sight in front of her to change.

  It doesn’t.

  The road and bridge into town is nothing but weather-beaten rubble, undrivable. But the damage looks old. Settled into scars. It’s been closed long enough that kudzu has laid claim to the cracks. She steps out of the car, considers going forward on foot—but it isn’t her car. She can’t just abandon a rental.

  This can’t be. She hasn’t been gone…that long…

  But hasn’t she?

  Unwanted, exhausted tears well up and she folds herself back in the driver’s seat, honks once—the sound barely echoes. It’s swallowed in that unerring still void.

  Fine. This won’t stop her. There’s always another way into town, and Autumn knows it well.

  She wheels around, the world’s messiest three-point turn, and drives on.

  It took her months, agonizing ones, to settle Dad’s affairs and lay him to rest by scattering his ashes in the mountains. Months, with terrible, heavy questions in the back of her mind. And months, to get to know her grief and start to become comfortable with it. Because what is her grief but her love taking on a new form? God, it hurts. She was so afraid to lose Dad, and it’s every bit as terrible as she feared. But if she is truly an ageless woman, then grief is going to be a part of her life. She would rather have it as a friend.

  Still, losing both parents has uprooted her more than any breakup, more than any move. Autumn knows she was lucky in her parents. Many of her friends were not; Chloe raised herself while her mom drowned daily in a bottle; Ryan’s father used a belt when he came out; Ellis’s family refuses to let go of their deadname and yet cries when Ellis doesn’t return home for the holidays. Autumn’s parents were a glorious exception to most of the stories Autumn knows. Even when she introduced a woman to them, they never wavered—at least, not where she could see.

  So she will go back home, the place she knows where she may find answers and the place that the three of them once shared.

  Within thirty minutes, she’s pulling into the parking lot outside the ferry stop. It’s empty, not a car in sight. It doesn’t look abandoned, but no one’s selling tickets or waiting on the rusted benches for the ferry to cruise around the bend of the river.

  Worse yet, the other side of the river is a haze of green where she should see the town. Helpless, Autumn turns, scouring the area for some sign of life. It never occurred to her that she might arrive and find nothing. Autumn foregoes the dock and scrambles up the ridge of bank, muddy and messy, desperation driving her like a horse whip, thirsty for a glance of something. She stands there, awash in river air, scanning the far bank. But there’s nothing to see. Only endless green.

  It cannot all be gone. Autumn can’t be too late. No town, no matter how old, simply vanishes, does it?

  Autumn scans the tree line, the mottled choke of overgrowth. She holds her memories of the town in the warm hearth of her heart and summons it as best she can. The kitchen where Dad taught her to bake, the records Mom used to play. Her bakery, with ovens she always thought she’d return to once more, the Clearwater pecans, still the best Autumn ever tasted, the tree house, Sasha’s eyes in the darkness, her lips—

  Dad’s strange words. Just a newborn…but it happened sometimes in that town. We all knew. No one talked about it, but we knew. The closest thing to an answer Autumn has to unlock the mystery of herself.

  It cannot be gone.

  “Come on,” Autumn says. Her voice is thready and unfamiliar, even to her. “Please. Come on.”

  The air thrums and then blooms around Autumn. She smells an aroma any kid who grew up around orchards would know: the welcoming scent of a full pecan harvest. Greedy, she breathes it in, the only scant sign offered to her. Warm and earthy, it surrounds her, and between one blink and the next, the bank shifts, fuzzes, and she sees, somewhere in the distance, a light flicker on, marking where downtown should be. Then two. Then three. Autumn can only watch as it reforms before her eyes, the far bank becoming familiar to her again.

  Wind pushes at Autumn’s back, pulls her forward, heavy with the rustling of trees. It whispers not with words that speak to her mind, but with impressions that speak to the innate understanding of all living creatures. Ours, our child, one of us, she is back, she returns—

  And Autumn—

  Feels the warm hum of the ovens. Sees the glint of her old bakery tables, where she prepped cheesecakes and cupcakes and cookies, once. The tree house, swinging low over shallow water. She is gathered up in the swell of those words, of that welcome and—

  She returns to us.

  Leaving the world behind, Autumn returns to town.

  Act III

  Chapter Twenty

  Lil wakes up to chilly air against her skin and the smell of smoke. Muzzy gray light around her. Heavy dust motes scatter. She rolls onto her side, putting out a hand for Jason, but the Persian rug where they fell asleep—eventually, at some point—is cold. Once, she could sleep on the ground and rise for school without a thought; now she feels the press of wood in her bones. And the phantom press of Jason’s hands.

  “Jason,” she calls. Her voice is so rough she sounds ill. But there’s no answer. The glow of the morning after flickers. Weakens.

  Lil opens her eyes. The fireplace is black with dust, more than she’d seen the night before, and the walls are filthy. It wasn’t like this last night; it wasn’t so—

  No. That isn’t dirt.

  Lil sits up, her heart suddenly lunging in her chest. The air isn’t heavy with dust, and it isn’t dirt coating the walls, the floors, the furniture. It’s soot. Ash. And it isn’t the chandelier casting light over her body, but sky and sun. Above her, the second floors and roof are gone. They’ve disintegrated around her, as if a giant scooped a handful of the house out above her, leaving broken, burned boards behind.

  Honeysuckle House is destroyed. The vase with flowers: cracked, water evaporated, flowers burned beyond a crisp. Curtains, devoured from bottom to top, the rods cracked and blackened against the walls; one is thrown clear through the windows. The couch is burned to the skeletal frame, but the rug is only covered in ash.

  And so is she. It coats her body. She looks like a forgotten thing left to languish in an attic.

  It can’t be.

  Lil frantically brushes at her legs, her chest, her stomach, but as her body wakes up, new pains make themselves known. Suddenly the ache of sex and sleeping on a hard floor is the least of her worries. Red burns bloom all over her body, on her arms, her palms. The worst she can’t see, but she feels on her shoulder a building scream of pain.

  “Jason,” Lil calls, but it dissolves into a fit of coughing. The burn in her throat isn’t just dehydration. It’s smoke. “Jason!” He’s not there. Where is Jason? He wouldn’t…leave her. Not like this. Not unless he’s hurt, or he can’t come back to her. Above her, something deep in the house groans.

  Standing, Lil covers herself. She won’t cry.

  In fits and starts, Lil rushes into the hall. But every step is treacherous. She’s barefoot. Nails stick up from cracked floorboards, glass from windows litters the ground. It’s arduous work to get through the hall. Too much sunlight reaches her; behind her in the entrance hall, something shatters. She catches her own ghostly reflection in a mirror and can’t bear to meet her own eyes or see her own body. She doesn’t want to know the damage.

  Lil must have passed out. Jason must have risen when he noticed the fire. Fought his way through, seeking an escape route for them both. She imagines finding him collapsed under fallen furniture or ceiling, or burned beyond saving. He must have gone for help, or—he’s hurt. The landline at Honeysuckle House doesn’t work, so maybe he ran…leaving her there? Alone and unconscious? No, it doesn’t make sense. Jason wouldn’t abandon her to the flames. Unless he had to. Unless he couldn’t return.

  She won’t cry. She won’t cry.

  When she reaches the breakfast room, it’s burned too, the table collapsed under the weight of its own frame. The counter where she cooked is covered in ashy remains. The carnage of a fire. Jason’s clothes are crumbled, covered in ash near the counter.

  Lil finds her clothes where she left them, tangled in the corpse of the table. The shirt is ruined, but the jacket remains, sooty but miraculously salvageable. Her jeans still button, and that’s all she needs. She dresses as quickly as she can. She won’t cry.

  The air is oppressive. Every breath hurts. Mortally wounded, the house moans again. Boards creak, splinter like toothpicks. It could be ready to collapse around her. Jason could be anywhere inside; the house is cavernous. She can only hope he’s outside, unconscious but alive. Lil doesn’t bother wrestling into her blackened, curling shoes. She picks them up, tucked them under her arm and inches her way across the floor. It’s treacherous. There’s no sign of him as she makes her way, quick as she can, out of the house, but she feels watched as heavily as she feels the burns on her skin.

  “It’s the smoke, not the fire that gets you,” Jason told her after his first bad burn, out at the old Texaco near the highway turnoff. He was twenty-three, still in training at the firehouse. When the nightmares kept him awake, she lay with her head on his chest, trying to calm his racing heart, his face flushed like he stood again before the inferno. “So much smoke, I couldn’t see. For a second, I swear I lost my way.”

  He wouldn’t leave her to the smoke unless he was trapped, unless something held him back from her. She won’t—she won’t—

  Clinging to what’s left of her heart, her hope, Lil steps outside of the ruin. The sunlight is bright in the Finch orchard. The leaves are a mix of green and orange, the grass nut-brown. But Jason isn’t there. Lil wanders across the driveway in a daze, like a sole survivor of some great catastrophe, alone in an aftermath of dust and smoke. Lil’s throat burns and she chokes on a sob.

  For all the phantom fires she has seen around this town, has she finally stumbled into a real one?

  “Jason?” she manages, one more time. But there’s no answer. He’s gone.

  ***

  “Sasha. Your birthday—that was twenty-nine years ago.”

  Sasha sees the whole thing. She watches Autumn’s story unfold, sometimes from above, sometimes from within the tale—she can smell the steam of a queer club at midnight, taste the cream-rich bisque of her culinary school kitchen. Sometimes she’s nodding, maybe, but it is a nod of habit, of a frantic grasping for the normal fakeries of conversation. It is not a nod of comprehension.

  This can’t be real. Autumn lost herself out there somewhere. Autumn has a drug problem. It’s a fable, a coping mechanism, a lie. It can’t be true.

  Autumn tells her that she’s fifty-nine years old. They’re both fifty-nine, out there somewhere. But she looks the same, just sitting there in front of her, as fresh and crisp as an unbitten apple.

  “That’s how old Mom was,” Sasha tries. “How could you—but you don’t look—”

  “I’m getting used to the idea,” Autumn admits. She’s curled her arms around herself, the first true sign of self-consciousness. “I think I’m aging. Just slowly. Sort of—” A laugh bursts out of her, strained and accidental. “God, sort of like a tree. Victoria, she saw right through me. I just didn’t want to accept it for a while. But it’s why I had to come back. I have to know if—I’m the only one. Or are we all like this?” She presses a hand to her mouth. “You’re the first person I’ve ever told.”