Lizabekt Jones was a woman full of regret and hope in equal measure.

The former, shr found, came in many forms. Just as a wise man had once told her that grief is just love with nowhere to go, so too was regret. For Lizabekt, regret was simply love with nowhere to go.

She carried it all with her in ways that she could manage, in ways that made the memory real, despite the lies. Like telling her lover that her brother had died of consumption, and claiming orphanage at age 12, and skill in handicraft from roadside cons, not churchgirl embroidery.

What she hadn’t expected was that Maple had stories of her own. Lies in some measure, or simply just lighter truths. Some were about herself: yes, I am sober. No, I have never been arrested. Yes, I still observe druidry. Others were, like Lizabekt’s, about others. Her sister. Her mother. Her stepmother.

Liz, however, had thought the past could never catch up to her. Not here. Not now.

She was wrong.