the clouds, there were spears of light breaking through, hitting the lawn and sidewalks and street beyond with the type of light you’d see in a Thomas Kinkade painting. Two memories surfaced uncomfortably in her mind. She looked away despite the beauty of the scene in front of her; in fact, because of the beauty of it. Juno the therapist had loved grass, a rarity in New Mexico. It had become a fascination in Washington to Juno the newly homeless. There was always grass, deep-watered, green and soft. When she slept in the park, she’d kept Kregger’s Swiss Army knife by her side, though the thought of trying to stab someone with the tiny blade held in her swollen, arthritic hands was laughable. It made her feel better to have it there, nevertheless. She hadn’t known where else to go, and there were always people chasing you away. The park had been the only welcoming place for Juno, so she stayed through summer and into fall. But Washington changed come fall, the never-ending drizzle coating the ground she slept on and leaving the grass wet. She remembered the damp seeping through her clothes night after night as she tried to get warm. She was never dry for those months and she’d become deathly ill, her fever spiking so high she’d been delirious. Some good Samaritan—a jogger who’d seen her in the same spot the day before—had called the ambulance. After that, she’d had the blue tent for a while.
Juno knew about Skinner and his rats, had studied his methods in school, so her aversion to wet grass was just a fact. It was how humans worked, picking up pieces of their experiences and choosing to fall either to the pain or triumph. If anything, Juno was just sad it had to be that way, that she associated terrible things with something she once loved. She suddenly felt hot all over as she had that day, before she slipped into that fevered sleep. The last thing she’d seen before her eyes had sealed shut was a blade of grass, so lush and bright she’d focused on it with all her might, her teeth clacking together. There were a hundred drops of the finest rain clinging to that one blade of grass. It was sharp around the edges, like the blades of her old carving knife. Juno had looked closer and seen that there were tiny writhing hairs, reaching their little arms toward her grotesquely. You’re not really seeing what you’re seeing, she’d thought. You’re sick, not stupid. And then she’d blinked a few times, her vision clearing. She’d had to remind herself to see things from the right perspective. It was just too much thought about grass, and when Juno woke up in the hospital, she found she hated it, simple as that. There was no grass in the crawl space, though, just dirt, dirt, dirt.
Enough is enough, she told herself. Get your chores done and crawl back into your hovel.
Or maybe that can wait, Juno thought as she spotted the family computer sitting dormant on the desk. It was the grass that made her want to do it, remembering how she’d blinked a few times, gained perspective and had seen the right thing: an inch-long blade of grass with two little drops of water balancing on its tip; something simple that her feverish brain had made ugly. You’re doing the same thing with Winnie that you did with that grass. You’re making her the enemy.
Yes, that was what she was doing. But still. She couldn’t leave without checking Winnie’s search history. Maybe that would give her some answers.
Juno scanned over the last few days of internet search history. Just a lot of normal shit like vegan recipes and celebrity gossip...and there it was. On Thursday night, Winnie had searched for a Josalyn Russel at 11:30 p.m.—hours after she usually went to bed. What she’d seen in the envelope must have left such a sour impression on Winnie’s mind that she’d lain awake for two hours before finally going to her computer. That’s what Juno imagined, anyway.
So there it was: Winnie had received Juno’s envelope in the mail, and then, when Nigel was in bed, had searched for this woman on the internet. She clicked on the link, the last website Winnie visited, and it took her to the article that Winnie had been reading.
Juno rubbed a square of her shirt between her thumb and index finger as her eyes scanned