Billy Joel said it best: I'm Movin' Out

The song belted (as best it could, considering the tiny laptop speakers it was playing from) across the nearly-empty space.

Ana had two boxes left to carry down to her car - thankfully light ones, compared to those of the magazines she'd accumulated over the last few months - and a couple small fragile items that required single trips.

She entered the room that used to be "her" kitchen. Opening one drawer then another with a zip, she made sure each was empty, and closed it with a thud.

She looked up into the window over her sink, and noticed the only plant she'd allowed herself at this apartment... Her tiny aloe plant.

Reaching up, Ana took hold of the small earthen pot it resided in, dumped out the extraneous water, and set it on the counter where she wouldn't miss it.

As she continued her quest to make sure the remainder of the drawers and cabinets were empty, memories flitted through her mind...

**

She was six, chasing her mother through the seemingly endless rows of big green plants. Plants taller than she was.

Corn, sunflowers, zucchini, tomato bushes, peppers. The garden measured only forty-by-forty, and occupied almost the entire side yard of their home. But the fresh vegetables were always exquisite during the summer, and could be a wonderful treat during the winter.

She stopped suddenly, hanging just at the edge of the garden before the grass started up again, when something tapped on her head. She looked up and saw a small branch of a tomato plant, dangling precariously above her. A tomato not bigger than her fist hung from the end and, as she watched, it slowly fell, first into her eye-level-vision and beyond. She took hold of the branch, ignoring those itchy little hairs, before it touched the ground. Looking at the end of the branch, she thought maybe it broke because the tomato was too heavy. "Hello tomater," she heard herself saying, "I bet you just wanted to say hi."

Cradling the branch and tomato in her little six-year-old hands, she ran through the garden again chanting "Mommy mommy mommy". Her mother came to the end of the row and swept her up in her very-strong mommy arms, asking "what have we got here?"

Little Montana showed her mother the tomato she'd rescued, and with the requisite cute mommy "oohs and aaahhs" the Kensington women returned to the small table they kept near the garden. Pulling out a clean knife, Frances Kensington quartered the first tomato of the season and gave a piece to her daughter.

**

As Ana leaned against the counter, tears sliding slowly down her smile-bunched cheeks, she remembered that only a few minutes after that first tomato she was stung by a bee and had to be hauled inside for her Epi shot. After that, Frances refused to let her daughter come outside.

Palming away the tears, she sniffled and gave a great shuddering sob. It wasn't very often Ana dwelt on the loss of her mother... but once in a while a nice memory would trigger her pain.

Later, after carrying the remaining boxes and items down to her car, Ana closed and locked her first apartment with two things in her hands - the same two that she'd walked into the apartment with - her cell phone and her aloe plant.

As she drove to Fallo - "No, my new house," she told herself - she decided that she would somehow grow a tomato plant or two.