CHAPTER ONE: 1985
Jules waits on the porch as her brother scavenges for a jacket that won’t swallow her whole. By the time they make it to the tundra, Jules no longer minds the cold, not even when Rob stuffs ice down her shirt.
The red hawk stitched onto their clothes looks bright against the snow.
CHAPTER TWO: 1990
Jules paces the length of her apartment. Every time she closes her eyes, the same dream plays over and over again, until her neighbor pounds on the wall, shouting curses in Japanese.
Rob is always gone, and she is always here.
CHAPTER THREE: 1995
Jules wears a katana and works the night shift on Sunset Boulevard. Elderly women stagger toward a theater in heeled sandals, their hair styled like clouds of pink foam. She eyes their hair and their kimonos, the way their hips sway as they walk.
She thinks there is something enduring about them—a kind of beauty untouched by time.
CHAPTER FOUR: FOR A SECOND, IT’S 2045
Jules sits in a room with her oxygen tank and only niece. Clara has her mother’s face but Rob’s blue eyes. Looking at them is such a punch to the gut that she barely notices the sympathy pangs when Clara lights a cigarette.
She considers it a small victory, one of those things she will hoard and keep close.
CHAPTER FIVE: 2000
Jules starts smoking. It’s impossible to quit, but sometimes she strokes her katana, traces the red-tailed hawk etched onto the hilt, and it’s enough to make her pause. Once she even flushes a pack of Mild Seven down the toilet
In the night, Jules dreams of snow.