Authors note: Hi, short chapter for this week. This felt like it could have been the end of the story, and it would be if this is was a story about Grace, but this is a story about Lucy and Sarah and they are far from resolved. I'm just about finished with chapter 32, but I'm not sure if I'm going to finish posting the story here since I'm concerned with publishing issues. I'm planning on cleaning it up and publishing an ebook this summer. Thanks again for reading and your comments.

Chapter 29 February 22nd, 2026

“It can’t still be February, can it? Lucy asked.

Grace spoke as she continued down the trail, “I know, crazy isn’t it, like 70 degrees in February.”

“We should get used to it,” Sarah said as she brought up the rear of the group. “Climate change and global warming guys, it’s for real.”

“Geez, you're so much fun to be around,” Lucy said.

Grace laughed, “Why you gotta be a Debbie Downer?”

“Sorry,” Sarah said “But do you really remember it being 70 degrees in February when we were kids?”

Lucy blew air through lips, “Yeah.”

“OK, it’s a real problem and we’re all more aware of it now. Thank you Sarah, but can we enjoy our hike?” Grace asked.

Sarah giggled, “Sure, sorry. Ignore me.”

“Trying,” Lucy said. Sarah wasn’t sure if that was a joke or not.

They stepped down a small incline in the trail, and Sarah felt her tender nipples bounce. She looked down at her light green, soft knit shirt. If a person looked close they could see the outline of her sports bra under it. She didn’t really need it, not yet at least, but the compression seemed to help with the mild pain, pain she had come to cherish.

The last two months had created some huge differences for all of them. Sarah had kept going to therapy every week. The first few sessions felt like talking in circles. She stuttered, she froze up. She often said things like, “I’m not really that sad, I’ve been really lucky in life.” When the topic turned to their attempts to have children, and the miscarriage, Sarah found herself crying over a decade of pent-up grief that she’d never allowed herself to process or even feel.

She wasn’t out in public, but Sarah was changing in both her body and her mind, she felt like she was moving half a step out of sync with the world. Men at Wal-Mart were giving her suspicious looks. People who she’d known forever would do a double take when they saw her and when they used her old name it felt wrong. “How’s it going, man,” sounded like an insult.

Lucy had started seeing a therapist too. Talking about her anxieties and fears didn’t make them go away, but talking about them seemed to help her feel less need to drink. She’d also begun her own project. She was researching foster care again, like she had ten years ago.

She was still awkward around Sarah, and often still used her old name, or some random female name with a laugh, which Sarah would gently correct.

Grace had started school. She liked her classes, liked her professors, but the rest of it hadn’t come as easily. Her new friends were an hour away, living a different version of college. But she had started talking to a girl who wore at least 100 bead bracelets up and down her arms.

Ahead of her, Grace stopped and turned, raising her camera towards them.

“Hold on,” she said. “The light’s really good right here.”

Sarah and Lucy stood side by side and smiled for the camera, but there was an awkwardness to their closeness that didn’t used to be there.

Further down the trail they came to the edge of a clearing, there in the thick grass stood the deer. Grace knew it, as sure as she knew anything this was the same deer. The deer she painted last summer when she first joined Sarah’s class.

She turned back to the other women and whispered, “That deer saved my life.”

As if he could hear her from 500 feet away the buck’s head came up high out of the grass and focused on them. He still held his antlers late into February. They all watched each other in silence for a few moments before the deer went back to searching around the grass.

“That’s the deer you painted?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah,” Grace said. “It was right after I met you. I wasn’t doing well, like, you know. I was alone, and didn’t see… But I thought I heard him tell me to paint him.” Grace turned from the deer and faced them, her face turned from serious to a smile. “I was imagining it of course.”

A couple more deer walked across the field and joined the buck. Grace dug in her camera bag and switched over to the tele photo lens. She was able to snap several photos.

As they made their way back to her truck Grace broke a long pause in conversation. “I’m going to move in with Evan.”

Sarah and Lucy looked at each other with a mix of excitement and surprise.

“You are?” Lucy asked.

Grace smiled, “Don’t worry, I’m finishing this semester.”

“Evan lives in Carbondale. What about next semester?” Sarah asked.

“I’m going to transfer to SIU, or maybe John A Logan? Don’t worry, I’m not quitting. I think I’m going to go into nursing. Get my RN. They need nurses everywhere.”

Lucy and Sarah looked at each other and smiled, “You sound like you’ve been thinking,” Lucy said.

Grace stopped and faced them. “I have, and seriously guys, I don’t think I’d be here if it wasn’t for you.”

Tears fell from the three women’s faces, and they huddled together for a hug.