Charlie hated winters in Washington. She didn’t like being cold. She didn’t like layers. And the most egregious part: the ducks left in the winter.

She liked to sit by the pond and watch them in warmer weather. The park surrounding the pond didn’t have a playground, just grass and a few picnic tables, so there were rarely little kids there disturbing her peace. She brought her sketchbook and made wobbly, uneven drawings of them. She wasn’t a very skilled artist. People kept telling her to learn anatomy and shading and color theory but she wasn’t really interested in becoming a good artist. She did art for fun. She liked to flip through the pages and laugh at her messed up ducks with their too big feet and too small heads. Drawing was just something to do with her hands. A way to interact with the world. And with the ducks.

Her favorites were the buffleheads, though she loved the green-headed mallards too. Buffleheads, aside from having a perfectly whimsical name, didn’t look like typical ducks. The females were brown, but the males were the stars of the show. They were made up of stark contrast, black and white with iridescence around their eyes. She could spend hours watching them streak through the sky and paddle across the water, like little aquatic pandas, trying in vain to capture them in pencil.

Charlie liked spring the most, when the ducklings hatched and followed their mothers around in crooked little lines. She watched them trip over themselves and splash clumsily into the water. They were the hardest to get into her sketchbook, constant blurs of movement.

In the winter, the park was mostly deserted of both people and waterfowl. The birds were what bothered her the most though. When she was a kid, Charlie had the idea that she’d knit all the ducks little sweaters so they’d stay at the park. Her mother had, a little impatiently, explained that ducks didn’t want to wear little sweaters and even if they did, it wouldn’t change their migration patterns. It was biology, her mother had said. They would always leave.

“But why?” Charlie had demanded.

“Because, Charlotte, they’re animals. Animals don’t change their behaviors.” She wouldn’t allow any more questions about ducks.

As she got older, Charlie realized her mother’s explanation wasn’t quite right. As with most things she learned as a child, there was more to the story. Numbers can go lower than zero. The colonists didn’t share a friendly meal with the Native Americans. Animals do change their behaviors. Her mother had overlooked the tiny little fact of evolution.

Animal behaviors were constantly changing, just very slowly, over generations. Ducks, for example, change their migration patterns with the changing climate. Sometimes they need to find somewhere warmer for winter than the usual place. Sometimes their breeding grounds no longer have enough food and they lay their eggs elsewhere. The realization was worrying. Charlie would be heartbroken if, one spring, her ducks didn’t come home.

She spent more time at the park than usual her senior year. College acceptances were coming in soon and she hadn’t decided where to go. She’d applied to four schools. Three in state, one out. She longed for the sun and the beach, but the one thing keeping her from committing to college in California was her ducks. She couldn’t imagine leaving them.

“They have ducks in California, Charlotte,” her mother reminded her over and over, sounding just a bit more irritated each time.

Charlie knew that. But they wouldn’t be her ducks. They’d be California ducks. Did California ducks even need to migrate for winter? Would she even get to miss them?

She was attached to her northern ducks. She’d named them. Or, tried to. She thought she could tell them apart but some days she had to admit she was just guessing.

Her mother reminded her that she would be back for Christmas, which only made her more miserable. She would be on an opposite migration pattern from her ducks.

Charlie’s mother said she didn’t understand the desire to move so far but she never said much more than that. She never said she didn’t want Charlie to move. So, Charlie moved.

She wanted a tearful goodbye scene at the airport. She wanted her mother to cry and hug her. But animals don’t change their behaviors.

“Be safe out there. San Diego is a big city. There’s a lot of, you know, crime.”

Charlie rolled her eyes. “I’ll be in the dorms, mom. I’m pretty sure crime won’t be that much of an issue.”

“Well, just be careful.”

She said “Okay,” because she knew there was nothing else she could say.

Her mother checked her watch. “You should go. Make sure you have time to get through security.”

“Okay.” Charlie adjusted her backpack straps.

Her mother gave her a one-armed hug, the kind you give the aunt you only see on Thanksgiving. Charlie looked back before she turned the corner, but her mother was already walking away.

A few months into the semester, Charlie thought maybe she wouldn’t go back home at all. She loved San Diego. She loved feeling the sun on her skin. She loved being able to take a short drive and end up on the beach, warm sand under her feet and cool ocean spray on her face. She spent hours wandering around her new home, charting grocery stores and appetizing restaurants.

It was entering the last heat wave before it really started to cool down, when, on one of her walks, Charlie found a park. It had a rusty swing set, a sad plastic slide, and a pond. She wandered in. There was an old couple, strolling around the walking path, holding hands. By the pond, a few teenagers were skipping stones. A mother pushed her young daughter on the swing. The scream of the rusty chains echoed through the park like a bird cry.

Charlie made her way to the pond. Already she spotted mallards dipping their heads into the water. She sat right on the ground, as close to the edge as she could, and pulled out her sketchbook. She’d taken to bringing it on her walks, just in case something struck her. So far it was full of crooked sidewalks and hastily scribbled squirrels.

She was in the middle of poorly shading the mallards when something caught her eye. A black and white streak. She watched it glide over the water, splashing down on impact, and then twist its head to clean its wing. A bufflehead. Charlie looked around for someone to tell, but found no one was nearly as interested in the ducks as her.

She pulled her phone out and took a picture. She sent it to her mom along with a message:

“Look who I found all the way down here :)”

Her mother responded the next day, to ask when winter break started.

When Charlie got back, her hometown felt different. Not smaller, just changed somehow. Her mother kept her busy, running errands and decorating. She made an event out of Christmas even though it was only ever just the two of them.

They always opened presents and then had breakfast together while watching a Christmas movie. They always cooked dinner together, and always the same dinner. Animals don’t change their behaviors.

Charlie had been excited to come home, but the longer she was there, the more she wanted to go back to California. It was like a pull in her stomach, calling her home to her dorm and her friends and her ducks. Leaving would be much easier this time. She had no expectations of a tearful goodbye.

At the airport, her mother picked an invisible piece of lint off of Charlie’s sweater.

“Rested and ready to hit second semester head on?”

“Yep.” Charlie checked the time on her phone again. “I should go. So I have plenty of time to get through TSA.”

“Good plan.” Her mother smiled. Then she hugged Charlie. A proper hug this time, with both arms.

Charlie leaned into her. She felt her mother’s itchy coat against her cheek. She inhaled; vanilla perfume, coconut shampoo, and jasmine hand lotion all mixed into the indescribable scent that she always associated with her mother. It was sickly sweet and a little overwhelming, but drenched in the saccharine haze of nostalgia all the same. Charlie felt the strange urge to nestle into her like an animal.

Her mother pulled away first.