Zoe stood at the edge of the yard, next to the quiet street, and watched her nana. As long as Zoe could remember, her nana would go out into the garden first thing in the morning and pick every little weed that dared intrude on her flowers’ sanctuary. When Zoe was little she always knew she’d find her there when she first woke up. Nana would have a smile on her face and dirt underneath her fingernails. Zoe loved the way her nana smelled, like flowers and soil and dew on the leaves. She missed her so much sometimes that her chest would ache, yet she was so ashamed of what she had become that she dreaded looking her in the eyes.

She had another dream the night before and when she woke up, drenched in sweat, she’d started walking. She didn’t have a destination in mind. She hadn’t meant to go home; it was just where her feet had taken her. She hadn’t even realized where she was until the sun began to come up and she was standing at the end of the familiar street. She’d sat on the corner for a while, until she saw her papa leave for work and then she’d carried on to where she stood now. She watched her nana and thought about the dream. They were getting more intense every night. It had been almost two weeks since she’d watched the girl die, almost three weeks since she’d given in to the call of the magic potion her dealer doled out, but the struggle was getting harder by the minute.

She stood there and asked herself why she’d come home. What did she expect to find there? As her thoughts raced, the old woman in the garden stood up straight and pulled off her floppy hat. She was pushing seventy, but there was no stoop to her shoulders and Zoe would bet that her short, gray hair was curled perfectly underneath the bandana she wore around her head. She watched her wipe the sweat from her brow and smiled at how, even at dawn, Nana’s bright red lipstick lined her lips perfectly.

She sighed heavily, trying to decide what she should do. She wanted to run to her nana and let her hold her and tell her everything would be alright. She knew that her nana would be happy to see her, no matter what; she always was. She also always gave in to her and had Zoe been there for money, the only thing Nana would have asked was how much. But Zoe wasn’t there to take from her this time. For once in her life the urge to manipulate the love that her grandmother had for her was absent. Zoe’s nana let her heart dangle from her sleeve and the stubborn, selfish girl she was had always been able to manipulate it. When Zoe was younger, she hadn’t cared that Nana had to argue with her papa every time she gave in to one of Zoe’s whims. As long as Zoe got what she wanted, she didn’t care about anything or anyone else. There were days and sometimes even weeks when her grandparents didn’t speak to each other, all because Nana had given in to something that Papa had forbidden. Zoe knew that her mother’s death and then Zoe’s antics as a willful adolescent had very nearly torn the couple apart, more than once. When she was little, all she’d ever wanted was a love like theirs that would last forever, but yet she’d never done anything but hurt them both, over and over again. She realized at that moment that no matter how badly she wanted to be home, she couldn’t do that to them again. She took one last look at her nana and turned and walked forlornly away.

She was almost across the street when she heard her nana’s voice: “Zoe?” She froze, torn between the need to feel her grandmother’s arms around her and the resolve to walk away. “Zoe, is that you?” She hadn’t seen Nana in months and she’d lost a considerable amount of weight since then. She knew her long brown hair was stringy and even worse; her once smooth skin was now marked with scars from the sores the drugs had infected her with. She didn’t want to turn around and see the disappointment in Nana’s eyes when she looked at her. “Please don’t go.” The plea was heartfelt and more than Zoe could stand.

With a huge lump in her throat she turned toward her nana. The old woman dropped the gardening tool in her hands and started toward her. Zoe told herself that she still had time to run away, but once again her feet took over. When she got close to her grandmother, they both stopped. Nana took in her appearance then and Zoe could see the pain etched into her wrinkled face. Several long, uncomfortable minutes passed and then Nana did what she did best, she opened her arms and Zoe melted into them.

“Oh, baby girl. I was so worried,” Nana said as she brushed a weathered hand through Zoe’s hair. “I’m so glad you’re safe. I prayed for you every night.”

Zoe swallowed hard around the lump threatening to cut off her oxygen supply. After what her grandparents had gone through, letting them worry like that bordered on evil. In a weak voice, she said, “I’m sorry, Nana.”

“Shh,” the older woman said, rocking her back and forth like she was a child. “It’s okay now. You’re home now. Everything’s going to be okay.”

* * *

Two hours later, Zoe was showered and scrubbed clean and dressed in a pair of her grandmother’s sweatpants and a tank top. She sat at the kitchen table in front of a plate that held more food than she’d eaten in a week. Nana was sitting across from her with so many questions in her eyes. Zoe knew that with their history, Nana was probably afraid she couldn’t afford the cost of the answers. “You’re not eating,” she said, instead. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“My stomach is a little upset…nervous, I guess.”

“You don’t have to be nervous here. This is your home.”

She looked up from the plate into her grandmother’s brown eyes. They were so faded from years under the sun that they were almost translucent. “It’s not my home anymore, Nana. I shouldn’t have come here. Papa is going to be so angry.”

“Oh, baby girl, he’s as worried about you as I have been. You know him. He just has a hard time showing his emotions.”

Zoe nodded, but inwardly, she disagreed. Papa didn’t have a hard time showing her how disappointed he was in her. He never had a hard time making her feel like the failure she knew she was. He hadn’t had a hard time showing her mother that he was finished with her. “When will he be home? I should go before he gets here.”

“You’ll do no such thing! Where will you go? Where have you been, Zoe?”

“Just here and there, Nana. I don’t want to make trouble for you, though.”

“You’re not trouble. You’re our granddaughter, you’re family. Family fights for each other no matter what.”

“I don’t want you to have to fight for me anymore.”

Nana sat back in her chair and folded her crepe-paper arms across her chest. “What did you come here for, Zoe? Money?”

It hurt that her Nana thought that, but Zoe didn’t fault her for it. It was usually what she’d shown up for in the past—that, or to hide out from the cops or whoever she’d stolen from on the streets. “No, Nana, not this time. I just…something happened and it did something to me. It made me want to come home. But I realized once I got here that I don’t want to put my stuff on you anymore. For the better part of seven years I’ve been in one mess after the other and you’ve always bailed me out. The financial cost was more than I deserved, but the cost of what it did to you and Papa…was inexcusable. I need to go, before he gets home.”

Her nana ignored the last part and said, “What happened?”

Zoe shook her head, slowly, and said, “I’m not sure. I watched a girl die and…”

Nana leaned in and reached across the table for Zoe’s hand. Zoe gave it to her and Nana said, “Did she overdose…on drugs?” Nana’s eyes were filled with pain and Zoe knew that the thought of anyone overdosing hit too close to home.

“No. She was in an accident. I tried to help her, Nana, but I didn’t know what to do. I called 911 and then I just held her hand until she was gone.” Zoe felt the tears rise again. She hadn’t cried since the night of the accident and she didn’t want to cry now. She swallowed them down and said, “I didn’t help her.”

She felt Nana squeeze her hand. “Oh, baby, but you did. You were with her and that means so much. No one should have to die alone.”

“Like my mom?” Zoe said, regretting the words as soon as she said them. They were words that she’d wielded like a knife when she was an adolescent, knowing full well the damage they did to the woman who had taken her in and tried everything to give her a good life. “I’m sorry, Nana. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Her grandmother let go of her hand and sat up straight again. “You don’t have to be sorry, it’s the truth, as sad as it is. Your mama died alone because we didn’t know how to help her.” Zoe knew that was partially true. But, she also knew that her mother had come there to ask for help that night, and her own father had turned her away. That was the way Zoe saw it for most of her life anyways. Now that she was older and she was beginning to realize what she’d put them through herself, she knew that it wasn’t so cut and dried.

Her mother had been a junkie. She ran away from home when she was sixteen, had Zoe when she was seventeen, and spent the next seven years showing up out of the blue whenever she wanted money or a place to leave the kid she could hardly care for. Even as a little girl Zoe knew her mother wanted to care for her. She saw her try, and she saw her fail. But the child that wanted a mother so badly forgave her repeatedly. Papa always welcomed Zoe inside when her mother brought her to them, but he’d close the door in her mother’s face and without understanding what he’d been through, Zoe resented him for it. When her mother finished with her drug binge and sobered up, days, weeks, or months later, she and Papa would fight like cats and dogs over where Zoe would stay. In the end, her mother usually ended up taking her and each time the hell of their lives got a little bit worse.

That last night, when Zoe was seven years old, they had been living in a homeless camp by the river. Her mother was partying with a rough-looking street guy and as the night went on, his interests turned to Zoe. She was too little at the time to understand what he wanted, or what he might have done to her if her mother had let him. Instead, her mother had stabbed him in the back and she’d grabbed Zoe and ran. She hailed a cab, and Zoe knew then where they were going. She only ever took a cab if they were going home. She’d leave Zoe there usually, and Papa would pay for the cab. Zoe had been looking forward to seeing Nana and Papa that night, but when they got there and her mother told them what she’d done, Papa lost it. All he heard was that she’d stabbed a man. Papa worked for the police department. He was an evidence tech and the law meant everything to him. Before her mother had a chance to explain why she’d stabbed the man, Papa had his phone in his hand and was dialing the police. Nana was yelling at him to stop and Zoe was crying. She didn’t want her mother to go to jail. There was so much chaos in the house that no one even realized exactly when her mother left. It wasn’t until the next day that the police found her. She was dead in an alley in downtown Memphis, with a needle sticking out of her arm.

“I really should go, Nana.” Zoe pushed back from the table and started to get to her feet. Her grandmother stopped her with five words:

“Tell me about the girl.”

Zoe pictured the girl’s bloody face and her knees went weak. She wished that it was her empathy for the girl that caused it, but the truth was, it was her own guilt. Before she knew what she was doing, she said, “She kept asking for Levi.”

“Who was Levi?” Nana asked.

“The love of her life,” Zoe said, without a doubt.

Nana smiled sadly and said, “Did she tell you that?” Zoe shook her head. “Oh, did you meet him?” She shook her head again. Finally, she said:

“She used her last breath to call out his name, and I saw it in her eyes right before she died. She loved him so much. I’ve dreamt about her every night since. Some nights in my dreams, I watch her die again and other nights, I see her like she probably was…alive and happy. There was a picture of her and her boyfriend on her phone. They were both smiling, but there was something else…a look in both of their eyes that said neither of them would rather be anyplace else. I dream about them both sometimes and other times, it’s me in the dream, with him. How twisted is that? I’m having…” She started to say wet, but remembered who she was talking to. “I’m having dreams about a dead girl’s soul mate. What’s wrong with me, Nana?”