She turned from her side to her back to her other side, listening to Sam ask his mother if she could make bacon and eggs for breakfast, and then to Nigel rapping along with Eminem as he washed the dishes from the bacon and egg breakfast. She heard Winnie on the phone with someone from work as she opened the door for a delivery. “If we have to, we can replace her with Joanne from—yes I said replace—”

Her voice was indignant. There were two sides to Winnie, indignant and vulnerable.

Juno had eaten her second sandwich for dinner on Saturday night along with a few large swigs of apple juice straight from the jug. And then at night, while the Crouches slept off their Saturday, Juno snuck out during the early morning hours to use the bathroom. She wasn’t as stiff as she thought she’d be and was in an exceptionally good mood. Safety and a good night’s sleep and a family to nose around in. She’d become a true geriatric. Kregger would have howled.

On Sunday morning she ate a cherry pie Lärabar for breakfast and drank more apple juice. She figured it was early since the Crouches had yet to come downstairs. In the two days she’d slept in their closet, she’d come to decipher the way each of their footsteps sounded on the hardwood. She strained to hear even the muffled sound of footsteps, but the house seemed fully asleep—aside from Juno, the closet mouse, that was.

Suddenly, she felt like taking a risk. She rolled out from her hiding spot and got to her feet. The ceiling of her closet was surprisingly high. She stretched her arms above her head and did the yoga poses of her youth to try to ease out some of her stiffness. She’d been taking the Crouches’ Advil—two pills every four hours—and it had staved off the worst of the pain through the day. She stretched out her neck, rolling it back as she breathed deeply and opened her eyes to the ceiling. But then she heard someone stirring upstairs, the sound of running water. She stretched once more—Tadasana, mountain pose—before crawling back to Hems Corner.

Juno was anxious. She rubbed a spot behind her ear, staring into the darkness. Even in the closet she could hear the sound of the rain outside. What would happen if they caught her? You know what would happen, she thought. They’ll haul you back to your favorite place in the whole world. Juno didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to die in prison, either. And the truth of the matter was that she was dying. She could feel the rot; her kidneys like two old fists that were losing their grasp.

The spot behind her ear was stinging, but her fingers kept their back-and-forth rhythm. Be present, be grateful. She lifted her old mantras from her other life and tried them on for size. Where would I normally be? A series of images flashed through her mind, and she flinched from them. The more accurate question was probably where had she not slept? For a while Juno had had a blue tent. Wherever she pitched it, the police would eventually tell her to move in their deadpan way that made her feel less...and less...and less. The humiliation brought by those hard-faced men in uniforms, their faces stoic but their impatience loud. Go, you can’t be here. Leave, you have to move. You can’t squat here. She had nowhere to go and still she was commanded to leave.

It became easier to sleep in the day. Juno took naps on benches, in the grass, sometimes in a coffee shop where they thought she was just a shabby old lady dozing with her morning joe.

You’d be in the park, she told herself, turning toward the wall. The park itself was good, peaceful, but having to live there was not. She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head and, tucking her palms between her knees, began to shiver. She had a master’s degree in psychology, she knew about Pavlov’s dogs, and she knew that the sound of the rain made her cold and afraid because it had become an enemy—something that threatened her safety and comfort. And wasn’t safety a basic human need? Of course it was. As was shelter. And you are safe. Her mouth formed the words, though she didn’t dare say them aloud. You’re safe...you’re safe...you’re safe...

When she woke there was music playing. Juno rolled onto her back, carefully tenting her knees. If she stayed still for too long her hands and feet would swell up like puffer fish. She breathed deeply, trying to make out the melody. She smiled as she caught a few of the lyrics. Dale had liked that song. Dale, her youngest, sweetest son. She mouthed his name, Dale... Dale... Dale...and felt better for doing it. Dale with his wiry brown curls; he had a bend in his nose, and long bony fingers that could play the piano more nimbly than hers. She missed him so deeply that the missing had become an organ. A throbbing, volatile organ. She curled into herself, into the pain. She deserved to feel it, and so when it came, she allowed it in, like a woman in labor.

Failure as a mother should hurt. It should feel flat and dull and never-ending. Juno would take all the pain in the world, carry every single bit of it, for one chance to see Dale again and tell him how sorry she was.

The song changed, and now she could hear the individual voices of the family singing along—Winnie off-key and Sam with his unbroken voice that would soon start cracking. Nigel, who was a good singer, sang around them, harmonizing with their squeaks and squawks in good humor.

She ate the canned beans for lunch, listening along with the Crouches’ movie: Sense and Sensibility (Winnie had won at rock paper scissors). That evening, Nigel opened the door for the pizza they’d ordered, and Juno heard the rain really coming down.

“Is that thunder?” Nigel’s voice was incredulous. She could picture him peering over the pizza guy’s shoulder toward the flashing in the sky.

“Yeah, there’s a lightning storm. Pretty cool.”

Pizza girl, Juno corrected herself. When she’d first come to Seattle it had surprised her that thunder did not often accompany the watery days. In her old life, she would have told anyone that she liked the sound of the clouds colliding, but in this life, it scared the shit out of her.

An awful memory bloomed as she lay on the closet floor. The first time she’d not had the money to pay for her dirty little room at the Motel Palm she’d slept in her car, pushing the seats down and laying an old comforter across the trunk space. The lightning had woken her from an alcohol-induced sleep. And five seconds after she opened her eyes, Juno had thought a semi was rolling over her car. Thunder bellowed from nearby, and then the rain had come in fat, fast drops. Bullet rain being shot from some heavenly AK47.

Realizing that she wasn’t in immediate danger had done little to soothe the fear and despair that had woken up with her. She wasn’t going to die right now, but her ticket had been expedited with her disease. It was up in the air how—if hunger or cold or being hit by lightning could outrace the lupus, but she was fine with that. It was all talk; she was a small woman without options, without friends. Regardless, it had rained for three days while Juno lay huddled in her gasless Prius, stranded in a Walmart parking lot. She’d run in for food and to use the restroom, but had otherwise remained sedentary, frightened, and in shock.

What now? What now? That thought marched through her head, demanding to be heard. She didn’t know what happened now. She’d given answers to people during her career, and yet here she was as answerless and lost as any of them had been.