“You make one egg and leave the pan in the sink until someone else develops a relationship with it.”
“That sounds like cooking with community involvement.”
She did not smile.
That was when I saw the rest.
Three boxes beside the dining table.
A suitcase near the hallway.
Half the books missing from the shelf.
The blue blanket gone from the sofa.
I looked toward the bedroom.
The closet door stood open.
Claire’s side was nearly empty.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
Rachel.
Car at 6:40 tomorrow. Radio at 8. Do not stay up.
Below it waited four unread messages from Sophie.
A photograph of Claire leaving our building had appeared online that afternoon. Her face was partly hidden by sunglasses, but the jacket was the same one she had worn backstage in Denver, and someone had connected the two images.
Sophie had spent the last hour asking how I wanted to describe her if the radio host brought it up.
I turned the phone facedown on the entry table.
“What is this?”
Claire folded another dish towel around a glass.
“I’m packing.”
“I can see that.”
“Then we’re starting from a useful place.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
She stopped wrapping the glass.
“Annie.”
The name changed the room.
She only called me Annie when we were alone.
