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Show Moon - 92 kitchen for another beer. Alice turned to the window as if to search for her girls. Ruth set down her knitting and began to gather up the empty coffee cups. A loud snap from the fireplace made Michael jump a little. Gloria opened her mouth as if to speak, but did not. Esther was trying to catch Joy's eye. Anne set her half-eaten cake on the floor. She looked at each of them, asking the question. Then she waved her hands in front of her face, warding off the answer she really didn't want to hear, erasing her questions, her need, her shame. The girls burst into the room, bearing aloft their jars of fireflies like torches. The boys trailed behind, looking embarrassed. Gloria said, "Did you know that their light is created in the abdominal organs?" Before she could launch into a detailed explanation, Esther said, "They have heartburn, like us. Let's go to the motel. It's getting late." They left the next day, after calling from the motel. Joy wanted to beg them to come back, to stay with them long enough to do some good. Something dragged out with them, like the ocean before a tidal wave when the shore is naked and enormous, its helpless creatures and tangles of seaweed indecently exposed, stranded, unable to escape whatever was going to come next. , This was their cottage by the lake, the place they came home to between other places, their home that must never change. So none of them spoke about how it had been changed by the reunion and by time. Joy walked over to the stables and discovered that the horses were gone, the barn in a ruin; the grass was eating into the paddock like a slow fire. Her willow hut in the woods had long been crushed under deadfall. She pulled away the fallen branches and dug |