I didn’t know anything about it, other than people somehow peopled the planet. Was that a lot of weeks? Was it a safe number of weeks to suffer a tragedy?
“Who are you talking to?” Heather said. A shadow rose to a sitting position. The blanket fell away. “Who is it?”
“It’s Dahlia,” Sachin said.
“Heather, I’m so sorry,” I said.
The shadow shifted slowly, ungainly, as Heather got to her feet. Then the shape rushed across the room so quickly I took a step back. Heather came to a stop with a big baby belly pushed up against the island.
“Babe?” Sachin said, a warning edge to his voice.
He scooted the knife block out of reach.
“Dahlia,” Heather spit out, her hands claws on the stone counter. “What areyoudoinghere?”
30
Okay, that was a rocky start.
I sputtered something to Joey’s sister about wanting to offer my condolences,as one does. But those words didn’t belong to me and didn’t sound at all convincing coming out of my mouth. I was a talking horse, pawing the ground and hoping to be understood.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” I said, finally. “To let you flay me, I guess.”
Heather’s anger fell away, as quickly as it had roared to life, but she was a husk without it: wan, pale, her dark eyes sunken. They had the same chin, she and Joey. The same sharp cheekbones, the same curls.
“They said you found him,” she said, her voice gone tremulous.
Sachin put a cup of something hot in front of me. Water, with a stinking bag of something flowery floating in it, when I would have given anything for something a little more numbing. But then Heather was pregnant. She probably needed a drink, too, and couldn’t have it.
We sat in the living room. I sipped my sticks-and-flowers tea and took her through discovering Joey—I left out the terrible color of his skin—and everything I knew so far from the police. Heather listened,wincing the entire time against a blow that had already come. When I was through with everything I could think to say, I stopped, the fear of what she would ask me or say to me or accuse me of swelling along with the silence.
“Is it a boy or…?” I said.
“What was he doing sleepinghere, Dahlia?” Heather said. “When he should have been with you?”
“Honey,” Sachin said.
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “That’s a reasonable question.”
“He loved you,” Heather said.
I put down the tea. “I—I would have to start at the beginning of time and pull out some scientific data on primate affection to explain it to you, but… I know?”
“But you didn’t love him back,” she said dully.
“I wish I had. I wish I could. It was no fault of his. I’m the one…”
Sachin reached to pat Heather’s foot, but she shook him off. “Why waste his time?”
“I didn’t think I was wasting his time,” I said.
Had I been? Was I what the women in the McPhee’s ladies’ room thought I was? Or worse?
“I don’t know how to explain it,” I said. “I—I’m not great with, uh…”
“Basic human emotions?” Heather said.
“Yes,” I said. “I know you meant to cut me just then, well done, but that’s what I mean. That’s what I am, and Joey was… Joey was like…”
