It's a quiet evening. Norma thinks she never really took the right amount of time to appreciate quiet evenings before; her life has been a hectic mess, a desperate race, since the moment she was born. She never had the time or energy to appreciate the soft call of crickets from the tall grass, or the way the sunset paints the sky in orange and pink like a tart sorbet. Since Alana stepped into her life, she's had the time.
Not that things haven't been challenging. Navigating Norman's new diagnosis, putting a name to what was happening, was scary. In a way, there had suddenly been two new women in her life, where she had gotten so used to there being none. (She and Eleanora don't get along. They're working on that as a family.)
But tonight, things can be quiet. Strangely peaceful. Norman is out with Dylan. Norma sits with Alana on the porch, on the new swing in front of the living room window, a bottle of wine between them, split into glasses.
The peace can't last long, not with Norma's brain being the way it is. Toeing the line carefully, she clears her throat, snuggles close to Alana, her legs tucked up to her side.
"You know," she begins, almost haltingly, then decides to just go ahead and ask. Surely they're at the point where she can ask. "You don't talk much about what happened. Googling only got me so far when we first met. Not that I was trying to snoop." She was indeed trying to snoop. But that was ages ago. "What was he like?"