Fauve smiles, but oh how it stings. Everything an arrow to her thrashing little soul.
“Oh, this isn’t for me. I was buying some soup for poor Briana. I’m going to drop it off on my way home.”
I shudder at the name. Involuntary. Does Fauve notice? If she does, she doesn’t let on.
“Briana?” I say casually. “Really.”
“It’s out of my way, of course,” Fauve adds.
“Of course it is,” I say.
“But her parents so appreciate it, you know. Those sorts of gestures. Such kind people, you know. So generous to the school.”
“How kind of you,” I say, smiling. “How utterly selfless.”
Fauve looks at me like she wants to kill me. She’s picked a method, even. Enjoys going over it in the nights.
“Well, we do what we can, don’t we? Though I wonder if it’s doing any good. Such a weird illness she has, poor thing.”
She gazes at me now with blatant accusation. But it’s a bluff. She knows nothing. Nothing to know, am I right? I look at Fauve right in her sickly eyes. That are boring into mine. Determined to find guilt there, sorrow. She’ll find nothing. Nothing there but dancing, laughing light.
“Things are going around,” I say tragically. “It is that season.”
“Usually Briana is so hearty, so immune,” Fauve insists.
“Like a weed,” I agree.
“She just says everything hurts. So sinister.”
Pathetic, this attempt to bait me. It’s almost funny.
“Has she been tested for Lyme?” I ask like I really want to know. “Maybe she got bitten by a tick.” I look so very concerned.
“The doctors are telling her there’s nothing wrong with her at all. But what do doctors know, really? I told them she should see my doctor. He’s holistic. Considers the whole picture, the energetics. A specialist when it comes to pain, especially. I would have recommended him to you, Miranda, but then, you don’t seem like you need one anymore.” She smiles at me. “You’re seeming so remarkably well these days.”
“Am I?” I smile right back at her. I shrug, unshaken. As if life is life is life. A mystery. Sometimes we’re down, sometimes we’re up, aren’t we? The wheel of fortune, always turning.
“I still have issues, of course,” I say. “With my back. And my hip is… my hip.”
“Her parents are worried sick, of course. They’re saying Briana is murmuring things in her sleep.”
“In her sleep?” Heart thrums in my chest now. But I continue to look unshaken. “Really?”
Fauve nods. “Your name came up, in fact.”
“My name?” A flash of lightning in the small of my back. The wine bottle nearly falls from my hands, but I catch it just in time. I grip the bottle, collect myself. “Well, that makes sense. I’m her director after all.”
I turn and smile at the moving conveyor belt. Still full of someone else’s groceries. I will it forward. Fauve watches me.
“It doesn’t surprise me either,” she says, “especially given the conflict the two of you were having. The day she got sick. What was all that about again?”
I drop the wine bottle. It shatters, pooling redly at our feet.
I look up at Fauve. Triumph. Triumph on her face even though she’s standing in broken glass, the wine flooding her salt-crusted boots. I turn to the cashier, who looks utterly gutted by the fact of me.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to the cashier.
In answer, she picks up the receiver of her work phone. She’s wearing a leopard-print tendonitis brace on her wrist. “Cleanup at register twelve,” she says miserably.
“Oh, look,” Fauve says, “they’ve opened up a line over there. I should run. I want to try and get there while Briana’s still awake.”
She crunches over the broken glass.
“Any words you’d like to pass along to Briana?” she calls over her shoulder.
In my mind’s eye, I see a face full of hate framed by flaming hair. Eyes closed and fluttering. Pale, parched lips mouthing my name.
“Just that she should take all the time she needs to heal. That if anyone understands about that, it’s me.”
CHAPTER 18
DATE NIGHT WITH Hugo. I sit before my triptych mirror, brushing my long, lush hair. The shine is really just incredible. The waves, like a Hollywood starlet’s. Three women gaze back at me. Three Mirandas. Mirandas I hardly recognize. Mirandas from long ago. Before the misery lines. Before the forehead furrow cast its shadow. Before the pallor of death settled deep into our cheeks. I gaze at their faces like old friends. Smiling at me, smiling to themselves. Because we cannot believe this is how we look. Is this how we really look now?