Three grey-haired ladies clad in flannel and sweaty, Gore-Tex t-shirts sprawled on their backs with their heads close together and their legs angled out like the spokes of a wheel.

“They say if you lie here and listen, you’ll hear the mountain,” Beth C said. She inhaled, slowly, and Beth found herself copying her, hearing Beth T do the same on her right.

Growing up, they had been called the Bees. B and B and B, together since three. They hadn’t remained together, of course, but Beth had always believed they had their own special gravity.

And see? Fifty-nine years later and here they were.

They’d spent three weeks driving cross-country, following a haphazard plan of black circles pockmarking a map of the US. Three weeks of hiking and eating deliciously greasy diner food and horrendously bad diner food; three weeks of wandering around little out of the way towns and laughing at tourist attractions.

They took another breath, still together. Beth squinted and spotted the crow, now a little black slash in the sky.

As they were setting out that morning, Beth C had assured them there was a trail. She had shouldered her faded blue pack, clutched the compass hanging from the striped cord around her neck, and smiled wide. They’d deferred to her because this was her part of the country and she was the one with the worn hiking boots, matches in her pack, and summers spent on expeditions in places like Scotland and Peru.

There had been no trail, of course, just rocky ridgelines veering upward and layered outcrops of crumbling grey limestone that made Beth feel like a mountain goat as she clambered across. Beth C forged ahead, occasionally consulting the compass and her hand-drawn map. Each time she’d nod, fold the paper twice before tucking it into her pocket, and declare, “A gorgeous day, girls!”

She had her compass, her map, her friends at her back. Beth had not doubted her when she’d stopped the final time and told them this was the place.

“Listen,” Beth C said.

Beth listened and heard the sighing shhh of a breeze in the scraggly juniper. She heard her heartbeat settling back down from the climb.

“I hear it,” Beth T said.

“And they say if you hear and then wish, with all your heart, the mountain will take you anywhere you want to go.”

“Italy,” Beth T replied. “The villa by the sea. Oh, it was so hot. But the light was like something you could eat.”

The wind shhh-ed at them. An echo of her own heartbeat joined hers, thud-thud.

“Mars,” Beth C said.

“You’d die on Mars,” Beth said.

“But I’d be the first human there.”

Beth T giggled, child-bright.

A hand found her right hand. Squeezed.

“Home,” Beth said.

“Home?”

“Not home. Home, home.”

It was her first thought. Not her white ranch-house with Desmond sitting in the living room and the dog claiming the couch and her recliner waiting, warm and cozy.

No. She saw home. Afternoon summer light through the curtains that were never fully closed, tracing a bright line across green carpet. She’d loved that carpet, loved laying on it, her cheek pressed tight, pretending it was a plain, a meadow, some far away emerald sea.

Beth reached her free hand out and found Beth C’s hand and now they lay together, connected, three Bees, listening to a mountain and wishing for…

Being small again, sprawled on the carpet. Tick of the air conditioner, taste of lemonade still on her tongue, her mother’s voice singing to the radio in the next room.

Home.

Beth heard it then, heard their heartbeats beating together as they held hands halfway up a mountain. And she heard—

Laughter, outside. With it came a flick of a shadow across the window, and then another.

Running up. Never knocked, did they.

The Bees.

B and B and B, together since three.

The clatter of the front door opening, footsteps sliding on linoleum, her name chorused.

Beth laughed and scrambled up.