She finds cards in gutters and tree branches, but a good deck is waxed to protect the inks, and these have all washed blank. She wipes wet hair from her forehead. Then she realizes what that means.

The storm pounds like the pulse of a giant, and Holly opens her arms: soaked to the skin, cold and laughing. She drinks the rain until her heart is full.

The Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility is about ten minutes out from Las Cruces proper. Holly and Roger always make it a point to pick up hitchhikers directly under the big signs that demand you not do so.

“So what’d you do?” says Holly to the dusty man sitting bitch in the truck.

“Possession with intent,” he says.

“Are you going to start again when you get back to town?”

“Gonna do more than just possess this time,” he grumbles.

“Pot?”

“Chalk.”

“Too bad.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” he chuckles, “I can get you pot.”

Roger drives, watching for roadrunners.

Holly’s amused. “Did you have a point?”

“Is that what it’s like to like boys sometimes?”

“Well,” she says, “no.”

“I’m hungry again,” Rose mutters.

The card is full of terror, trumpets and storm. “Gabriel,” says Holly. She touches the waxy face of Judgment and it is in that moment the most beautiful thing that anyone has made, that anyone will make.

“Yes,” says Rowan softly. “You’re the angel.”

Holly’s still caught in a stare; Rowan gathers up the rest of the tarot without looking at them. They’re both stoned anyway, and nothing good comes of reading those you love.

Rowan can’t adopt Holly because she’s poor, with a history of suicidal depression and (not coincidentally) breast cancer. Holly doesn’t learn this until she goes looking. She gets extra-nice for a while, and Rowan figures it out, and they fight.

I’m not going to tell you they never get a chance to make up. They do. They make up in plenty of time.