“Pawnshop.” She held the blade to the light. There was still blood on it, blood that looked black in the dark.
“Do you want me to drive you home?” I felt sobered up, by everything, by our run through the stairs, the night air, the adrenaline.“Or you can drive us if you want.”
“I can’t drive.” Another bitter little laugh. “Never learned. Des doesn’t have a car.”
“Well, then let me take you. It’s way too late for you to wait for the bus.” I had thought she would demur, slip away like she always did, slide out from under my attention.
“Sure, why not. After all, I did stab a man for you. A ride is the least you could do.” We smiled at one another, tentative smiles, a little shy.
“Okay, I’m not too far. That’s my truck over there.”
“I pictured you as more of a sedan girl.”
“It was my dad’s.” Already, again, a lump in my throat.
She sighed. “You must miss him a lot.”
“Every day,” I said, my voice weak, light. “He used to work here.”
“What happened?”
“You didn’t see that part?” I asked, surprised. “Your visions?”
“It doesn’t work like that. I don’t get to choose. Sometimes if a memory or image is really strong, still really present, it just sort of intrudes upon me. Yours did.” We got in the truck, and I started the engine.
“What was it? What did you see?”
She took a deep breath. I drove to the exit ramp of the lot, stopped, and pressed my employee badge to the window before the booth attendant waved me on. “A woman. Your mother, I’d guess. Sitting on the edge of a bed. A hospital.”
“Just sitting?”
“No. Sitting and—and screaming. Sort of, clawing at herself. A man’s hand on a white sheet.”
Without thinking, I hit the brakes. If there had been room for doubt, her words undid it. That memory played itself in a loop on my worst days. How it had taken me a few minutes to reach for my mother, how we struggled against each other for a moment when I held down her hands.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I asked you to tell me.” But I had only said that because a part of me refused to let myself believe, in what she said she could do and see. I hadn’t been ready, truly ready, to look straight at either of these things: that memory of the hospital room, or the feeling like I had just been shoved into a new reality. That Clara had a talent that defied logic, a talent I couldn’t understand.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like. Loving someone that much.”
“Me neither. I wonder if I ever will.”
“What about whatshisface?” That she pretended not to remember Matthew’s name gave me a small jolt of pleasure, and I felt lighter as I watched the casino recede in the rearview.
“It was never … never like that. I think in a way, that’s what I liked about being with Matthew. I felt safe from that kind of loss. I mean, it still hurt a lot when we broke up. It was humiliating. But I didn’t feel”—I searched for the right word—“despair. I felt like a version of my life was over. But not like, my entire life. My mom? My dad was her entire life.”
“She has you.”
“It didn’t matter. Not in those first few months. She kept threatening to take a bunch of pills. Or to leave the car running in the garage. Drop the hair dryer in the bath. It was like I wasn’t enough to keep her here. I guess that’s why I felt like I could leave. Like there was no real difference.”
“I’m sure there was. I mean, she didn’t do any of those things.”
“I guess so.” The clock on the dash said that it was 2:03 in the morning. The streets were mostly empty, save for a homeless man rummaging through one of the metal trash cans on the corner. I rolled the windows down and felt the stillness, the heaviness of the humid air. We were just a few blocks away from Clara’s shop, but the night still felt incomplete. After all the tumult, it needed some sort of closure. We needed a salve.
“I have an idea. Let’s go down to the beach.”
“Why?”
