It turned out there was more than one, an office park cluster of five, all with sweeping windows tinted blue, green, gold, part of the area’s sluggish gentrification.
Driving from one directory to the next, Dara stared numbly at the names, a distant buzzing in her brain: Hobart Partners, Glittman Technologies, Converged Network Services, Regan Logistics.
The lots sprawling and empty, except for the last one, a low-slung glass box, its interior blue like an aquarium. Etched across its darkened front were the words: Verdure Medical Spa. Beneath it, in smaller print: Physical Therapy ? Occupational Therapy ? Acupuncture ? Medical Massage.
This is it, Dara thought. The acupuncturist, the wife.
She paused a moment. Waited. Five, ten minutes went by and then a Shamrock taxicab, bright and jolly, appeared, slowing to a halt at the front curb.
She didn’t move, the sound of her own breath filling the car.
* * *
*
The man exited the taxi, his navy peacoat buttoned high in the cold. The blaze of his blond hair, the litheness of his movements. The cold air piping color like a painter might, along his cheekbones, his handsome brow.
He moved gracefully, if carefully, his posture straight as a sword.
Spine to the heavens, s’il vous plait, their mother always told him. And straight down to Hades himself.
Because it was Charlie. Of course. It was Charlie.
* * *
*
The glass box lit up, the lobby instantly sapphire, as a woman in a coat, scrubs came rushing forward, opening the front door to him.
Opening her arms to him.
The two of them a dark jumble of hands, of clutches, Charlie’s head dipping against the woman’s dark hair, pressing against her throat. The woman smiling at him with her eyes until the moment her gaze shifted, seeing something. Peering into the dark parking lot where Dara’s car idled, smile fading as she pulled Charlie through the door, into the blue heart of the building.
There was a feeling inside Dara of something falling and falling as she watched.
* * *
*
Charlie. Charlie.
Dara stepped out of her car, the air sharp as needles, sharp as the sword.
Pausing at the sound of the car door, the woman scanned the parking lot from the doorway, her hand curled over her eyes against the streetlamps’ glare.
Charlie’s PT is Mrs. Bloom’s acupuncturist is Derek’s wife is Charlie’s . . .
Bun loosening, her feet crunching on the parking lot salt, Dara began moving toward the building, the lights blotching against her eyes, her chest aching from the cold.
Ahead, the woman cautiously unlatched the door, swinging it open again, calling out.
“Are you here for me?” she said as Dara moved closer, seeing the woman, her dark hair braided, a faded parka unbuttoned over maroon scrubs. “Do you need me?”
Dara stopped and looked at her. She needed to take it all in, her frumpy coat, salt streaked, her thick-soled shoes, her strong nose and brow even stronger than their mother’s.
“Are you here for me?” the woman said again, drawing the parka across herself as the wind kicked up and began moaning.
“Are you injured?” she said, or seemed to, the wind like a roar in Dara’s ears now. Waving her arm out, waving her in, as Dara slowly backed away, back to her car. “Do you need my help?”
* * *
*
In the car, her hands red from the cold, resting on the steering wheel, Dara thought she should cry, but she felt only blankness, like a cold, smooth stone. She hadn’t cried even at their parents’ funeral, holding herself rigidly, her chin high and everything shuttered away. Marie had done all the crying for both of them, that angry, jagged cry. The kind when you can’t tell the anger from the grief because they’re the same somehow. Something ending suddenly before you knew it could ever end at all.
And, as fated as the ending feels when it comes, you still never said okay. You never gave permission and it all came crashing down anyway.
SHOW YOUR TEETH
It’s not true,” Marie was saying, both of them with their coats still on, seated at the kitchen table. “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care,” Dara said, reaching for the sour table wine, pouring it in yesterday’s glasses, their bottoms a sticky purple.
Dara had told her everything briskly, matter-of-factly. She told her what the detectives disclosed, what Mrs. Bloom shared. What Dara had seen.
After, Marie made her say it again, more slowly.
“But,” she said after, “it can’t be. Charlie—that’s not how he is. That’s not—”