The days were starting to blur together now, though not in the same numb, colorless way they used to when everything back home felt like it was dissolving between my fingers no matter how hard I tried to hold on; here, in the quiet haze of the hills, with no liquor cabinets waiting to be emptied and no eyes tracking me as though I might shatter at any moment, I was beginning to actually feel again, to sit with emotions I used to drown, to let them wash over me even when they stung.
Sometimes that meant I would feel like crying over absolutely nothing, and sometimes I did, and Sardine—whose very name still carried the power to pull a reluctant smile out of me—would simply hand me a tissue without asking questions, her silence saying more than any words could. When I first asked her about t
