“Extra plain,” she says. “With you on the side.”

Liberty

I frightened Miesha, showing up at the basement apartment with no notice, but that was the plan.

“Get your things,” I tell her. “You won’t be coming back.”

At least I hope she won’t be coming back. None of us know for sure how this will play out. Miesha does her usual balking. I’m mesmerized watching her. The way she waves her hands, the way her lips purse with annoyance, the subtle rumble of certain words. I’m seeing the smallest details of Miesha with new eyes.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I answer, but my heart pounds in my chest.

She’s still using her cane for stability. I take it and offer my arm instead. It’s midmorning and the streets are busy. Crowds are an asset, but I pull the hood up on my coat before we exit the building just in case.

I planned to tell her in the cab, to prepare her, but she keeps rattling on, filling the silence the way Miesha has always been prone to do. I keep waiting for the right pause but it never seems to come.

“Miesha, I need to tell you something!” I finally blurt out awkwardly, interrupting her midsentence. She stops. She sees the magnitude of what I need to say in my face; I see the painful expectation in hers. I never thought telling her something like this would be so hard. Now time is running short. We’re already driving down the alley.

“Miesha, I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you this before, but I just didn’t know how things would play out. I didn’t want you to be hurt all over again.”

Her chest rises in slow careful breaths. “What are you saying, Locke?”

The cab stops in the courtyard. Xavier and a small crowd are waiting, standing close to the bonfire in the middle for warmth. Miesha looks out the window, and then her eyes dart back to me, suspicious. “Why are we here?”

“This is what I was trying to tell you—”

The cab doors swing open. Miesha steps out and I run around to the other side to help her. I hold her arm as she walks slowly toward the group. “Miesha, the Favor they brought me here for was about saving someone. Someone that you—”

The crowd parts. Miesha stops walking. There’s nothing left for me to say.

Karden stands there staring at her.

I feel Miesha lean harder against me, like her joints have gone slack. “What kind of trick is this?” she says, her voice a shaky whisper, but Karden hears it just the same.

“No trick, Miesha,” he says and steps closer, hobbling on a crutch. “I’ve been a prisoner. Your friend rescued me.”

Hearing his voice, her knees buckle. I grab her around the waist and she straightens her legs. Her whole body stiffens like she’s forcing strength back into it. She steps away from me and walks silently toward Karden until they’re face-to-face. They stare at each other for the longest time, a space of time that makes the rest of us grow uncomfortable, like they’re both taking in the lines and toll sixteen hard years apart has brought. Finally, they whisper words to each other that none of us can hear. My fear that there would be nothing left between them vanishes. He reaches up, touching her face, and she melts into him.

The rest of us step away to the other side of the bonfire, giving them space, the moment too intimate even if it’s in the middle of a courtyard, but even through the crackle and hiss of the fire I hear Miesha’s sobs, something I’ve never heard from her before. And just that quick, suddenly the Favor is not about me trying to find a life, not about justice or a resistance, or anything large and global, it’s about something as basic as air and gravity, something as basic as the love between two people.

I look up and see Raine’s face in the window of Xavier’s home. Waiting. I see the fear in her eyes. Meeting Miesha is different from meeting Karden. She loved her adoptive mother and for her entire life had been told that her birth mother was an animal. I can’t make Raine wait through this any longer.

I walk back over to where Miesha and Karden are standing and I tug on her arm, turning her to face me. “There’s someone else you need to meet,” I say softly.

I intend to walk her inside the building but when we turn, Raine is already standing in the doorway. Miesha spots her. I hold her tight, waiting for her to breathe again, fearful that this final shock might make her collapse completely, but something else happens instead. She takes a deep breath, visibly becomes stronger right before my eyes, her chin lifting, pulling away from me, seeing the utter terror in Raine’s eyes just as I do, and for her child’s sake she keeps it together, becoming the steel-strong mother who plunged her arms through a window and into a burning building trying to save her baby so long ago.

“Her name is Raine now,” I say.

Miesha nods. “Raine,” she whispers to herself. She swallows. “Let’s go inside and meet, Raine.”

* * *

The four of us, me, Raine, Karden, and Miesha, sit in Xavier’s modest living room for an hour. At first I talk, telling Miesha about the Favor, then Karden talks about his time in prison, the Secretary taunting him with stories of his wife and child that nearly broke him. Miesha keeps it together, the only clue that a storm rages within her is whenever the Secretary’s name is mentioned and the knuckles of her fist whiten. Finally Miesha asks Raine if she remembers anything about her and Karden.

Raine shakes her head.

“No, of course you wouldn’t,” Miesha says apologetically. “You were too young.” For the first time her voice cracks. She takes a shallow clattering breath. “And your adoptive mother? She was good to you?”