March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.

They are a sea of strangers, unfamiliar faces in unfamiliar clothes, with unfamiliar voices, calling unfamiliar words.

No, Adeline has decided she would rather be a tree, like Estele. If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.

Another echo of Estele. Stubborn as stale bread.

Palimpsest.

Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source.

She can speak German, Italian, Spanish, but French is different, French is bread baking in her mother’s oven, French is her father’s hands carving wood, French is Estele murmuring to her garden.

At home he is a quiet man, committed to his work, but on the road he begins to open, to unfold, to speak.

indignant.