The mailboxes at 412 and 414 had stood side by side for twelve years, identical black rectangles with silver numbers, separated by a low boxwood hedge. Alicia Morales and Nancy Delgado waved politely across it if they happened to be outside at the same time. That was the entire history of their acquaintance.

Then death came twice.

First Ed Delgado: pancreatic cancer, six merciless weeks from diagnosis to the end.

Six months later Ruth Morales simply didn’t wake up one Tuesday morning in March.

Two houses, ten feet apart, became tombs with Wi-Fi.

One gray November afternoon the new mail carrier shoved a thick cream-colored envelope addressed to Nancy Delgado into Alicia’s box. Alicia carried it over. Nancy answered in Ed’s old cardigan, hair twisted up with a pencil, looking smaller than memory allowed.

“Thank you,” Nancy said, then, surprising them both: “Come in. I have coffee that isn’t terrible.”

Conversation came in careful fragments: weather, the new mail carrier, cooking for one. Alicia noticed Nancy’s long fingers trembling around the mug. Nancy noticed Alicia pushing her hair behind her ear the same way Ruth used to. They both felt something shift, like a door creaking open in a house they thought was sealed forever.

The misdelivered mail became an excuse. Banana bread. AARP magazines. A bottle of red wine “I can’t finish alone anymore.”

One December night on Alicia’s couch, knees touching, wine loosening tongues, Nancy reached first. Fingertips on Alicia’s cheek. A kiss that asked permission, then took everything.

“This is wrong,” Alicia whispered.

“I know,” Nancy said, and kissed her again.

They promised each time would be the last. It never was.

January, snow battering the windows. They made love for the first time on Nancy’s bedroom rug because neither could bear the bed that still remembered the dead. It was clumsy, urgent, brutal. Alicia sobbed Ruth’s name between kisses, clawed Nancy’s back until it bled. Nancy begged, “Stay with me, don’t leave me alone again,” tears soaking Alicia’s throat. They bit, bruised, came like dying and being reborn in the same second.

Morning found them drinking coffee like any ordinary couple, sunlight catching the silver in their hair.

“Still wrong?” Nancy asked.

“Maybe wrong was the part where we were alone,” Alicia said.

Six months later they rescued Max, a twelve-year-old golden retriever scheduled for euthanasia: gray muzzle, cloudy eyes, hips that clicked like castanets. Nancy cried in the shelter parking lot; Alicia signed the papers before she could change her mind.

A year after that, a half-feral tabby Alicia had been feeding on the porch claimed them both. They named her Ruthless. She tolerated exactly two humans and decided they were her religion.

Then came the April night they finally dared a real bed: Alicia’s bed, because Ruth had always hated the creak of Nancy’s headboard and Alicia needed to overwrite every ghost at once.

They undressed by lamplight, slowly, deliberately, eyes locked. Nancy’s body was sixty-four years of history: soft heavy breasts that had nursed three babies, the faint C-section scar low on her belly, freckles spilled like cinnamon across her shoulders. Alicia kissed every mark like she was reading braille with her tongue.

When she reached the inside of Nancy’s thigh, thin translucent skin, blue veins pulsing, Nancy’s breath fractured. Alicia stayed there forever, mouthing the tender place, inhaling the warmer, richer scent that gathered higher up. When she finally moved to the source, Nancy was drenched, curls soaked, swollen dark rose.

Alicia licked her open in one slow, merciless stroke from entrance to clit and Nancy’s hips snapped so hard the headboard cracked against the wall. Alicia pinned her down with forearms across trembling thighs and devoured her: sucked Nancy’s clit into her mouth, flicked it with the flat of her tongue, then the pointed tip, then sealed her lips and hummed. Nancy’s back bowed off the mattress; a raw animal sound tore out of her throat.

Alicia slid three fingers deep without warning, Nancy was so wet they went in to the knuckles on the first thrust, and curled them hard against the front wall. Nancy came instantly, violently, inner muscles clamping down so hard Alicia felt the pulse in her wrist, her elbow, the base of her spine. A hot rush soaked Alicia’s hand, the sheets, her forearm. Nancy kept coming, hips jerking helplessly, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes into silver hair.