Mom still has good days, some days. Those days, when I visit her at Alpine Rest, she knows who I am and asks how her grandson Jack is. On her not-so-good days, she tries to summon the Fire Cosmic and screams that I’m in league with Professor Incalculable, Atomo the Robot Boy, or the Golden Lady—who has a room down the hall.

Sometimes during these outbursts—“Professor Incalculable only thinks he can sever my connection to the Universal Fire!”—a nurse looks in. “How you doing today, Miss Mira?” the nurse says, or sometimes, with a big wink at mom, “Oh, Lady Flame, you’re a hot one!” Mom laughs, instantly calm, sits back down in her recliner, turns on the TV, loud. That’s the best a bad day gets. At least after those interrupted outbursts, she’s not here with me, but she’s not elsewhere either.

On those bad days when no nurse comes in, when I’m alone with her, she goes so firmly into the past that she takes me with her, just another innocent bystander here for the monologue as she robs Mercury Labs or the Natural History Museum in her memory.

In those moments, I don’t remind her that Incalculable died years ago (car crash) or that she went to the funeral. That was after the general pardon, when superheroes and villains could do things like that for each other openly. Though even before the pardon, Mom would’ve gone to a super’s funeral to show her respects and make sure they were really dead. She always made time for them back then.

Back then, her powers—well, I know what she could do with the Fire. There’s a reason why I only microwave dinners and won’t go to a barbecue and like a cool breeze even in winter.

Jack doesn’t know what it was like, and if I can help it, he never will. One time, at Alpine Rest—one time only—he saw his grandma cradle a spark in her hands, so gently, like a tiny living thing. I think she might have even cried a bit when it went out, or maybe that was just some drops from the water I poured over her hands. Since then, Jack doesn’t come inside to see his grandma during my weekly visits. Maybe it wasn’t that spark that scared him—maybe it was seeing me or her lose control. He doesn’t see a lot of that at home. Either way, he stays in the car or, if the weather’s nice, sits on a bench, doing his math homework.

He’s still young enough he’s excited to show off to me, bringing me A+ tests, extra-credit questions in his scrawled handwriting which is about all that’s left of the little boy he was. He smiles, telling me how he figured out the extra-credit question by himself. These are the only smiles my serious boy gives me as we drive to Alpine Rest after I pick him up from school.

“I would love you just as much,” I say, “if you got a few points off. The important thing is you always try your best.”

He sighs theatrically—which he doesn’t get from me—and huddles in his puffy coat, the a/c high in my car. “Not everything has to be a lesson, Mom.”

With Jack safe outside Alpine Rest, I brace myself before going in to see her.

Even on good days, when she remembers who I am and pats my hand—her skin soft with age, or maybe she always had soft skin, I don’t have childhood memories of her holding my hand to compare—even on those good days, after asking about me and Jack, mostly she wants to reminisce about the past: robbing Mercury Labs with Hexwraith, the Lantern Crew holding the dam hostage, her short-lived team-up with Ice Queen.

Even on good days, I’m sharing her with this other life.

Once, the Golden Lady catches me crying silently in the hallway outside Mom’s room. I’m good at crying silently. I feel the itch behind my eyes that tells me someone is reading my mind before I see her rolling up in her reinforced wheelchair.

I picture a wall, a vault, a big red stop sign—all tricks Mom taught me to block a telepath—and then just the word “please” over and over, which is my own trick. The itch goes away.

Her gold skin is too heavy to easily move, so she thinks at me: “She did her best.”

“It wasn’t enough,” I say out loud, louder than I mean to, but Mom won’t hear me over the TV.

The Golden Lady musters strength to lift her hands like balancing scales: “She did her best—it wasn’t enough.” The scales teeter-totter, then balance. “Two things can be true.”

I stomp off before she can read my mind more, before she figures out what’s in that vault, behind the wall, what my “please” hides.

But it’s Jack who figures it out, my clever Jack. One day, I get back into the car, obviously drained, and he tells me his theory. It’s a crude theory, but so is the truth. “If you didn’t come, she’d—,” he gestures with his hand, like a kid playing wizard, summoning flame. “No one else loses their superpowers. Somehow, you stop her. I can’t think of any other reason why you’d visit every week.”

I think about lying, but I’m trying my best, so I show him Professor Incalculable’s Obsidian Egg. It’s not really an egg, I explain, and it’s not really obsidian. It’s an interrupter tuned to grandma’s connection to the Fire.

She knows about it—she’s the one who got it from Incalculable back after the pardon, after her diagnosis. She’s the one who told me how to use it, knowing back then—we both did—that soon she’d start having more bad days than good.

He takes that in. I can see him calculating. No extra-credit for this one, Jack.

“Even after . . .” he says, vague flapping of his hands, not knowing what to say. He doesn’t know the details of my childhood, only the shape he sometimes pushes up against—that I’m the only mom who doesn’t have a collection of scented candles, who orders ice in all her drinks—no photos of me as the birthday girl, no photos of me as a kid at all, my past completely consumed by her burning.

I don’t tell him, “You’ll understand when you’re older,” because I’m afraid he already understands. I nod and squeeze his hand and, still enough left of my little boy, he squeezes back.

He’ll have this memory, I tell myself, the feeling of my hands, strong and soft, not letting his hand drop, not holding so tight I bruise.

For a moment—just a moment—I feel a tiny spark cradled in his hand. Just static from the dry cold air, I tell myself, but I don’t believe it.

I don’t say anything. I’ll let him tell me when he’s ready. I’ll be here for him in the ways that I can be. It’s the best I can do. I hold his hand till he’s ready for me to let go.