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By Root 620 0

or maybe he's already dead, and this is all hell is, fog. Confusion, he thinks, waiting at the corner, waiting, and, sure enough, she passes him. Again, he follows her along this same route. To the outskirts of town. Past the country club. Wrought-iron gates and high shrubs. Hidden driveways, one huge house after another. At the weathered sign, she turns. FairWinds. Up the long, bumpy road. But he parks down below on the street and waits. Two hours she's been in there, same as yesterday. He gets out, trudges up the rutted road, to a sheltering grove of hemlock trees. He brushes pine needles off the pitch-blackened granite bench, then sits down. He stares up at the brick mansion. Slate roofs, porticoes and balconies, French doors, stone urns gray with weeds, and he feels runty and insignificant, unwanted, never good enough, always scrambling after scraps, the little he's ever had, while she's in there, inside with him. Fucking Hammond and she wouldn't even let him touch her. Making him the fool. Taunting him. Daring him to. It's her fault. How many more chances does she deserve? One—he'll give her one.

His eyes open with the racing engine. Her silver minivan flashes by. Asleep for only a minute, and he's missed her. He runs down to his car. With every corner and bump the big box thumps against the back of the seat, reminding him what an ass she's making of him. But not anymore. No, why should he? When it's done, he'll leave. But maybe she'll listen, and he won't have to. He's tired. There she is. He drives so close behind he can see her face in the side mirror. Good, she's scared. She stops at the red light and he lets his bumper goose hers with the slightest tap. Again. When the light changes she turns suddenly, so does he.

“Give me a chance!” he yells. “One last chance!” That's all he wants, that's all, but she pulls her car, tires screeching, into the police station parking lot, so he keeps driving with the television in its box thump-thumping away.

t's a rainy Sunday morning. The call comes at nine as Kay said it would in last night's message. Nine on the dot as if she's been staring at the clock, hand on the phone, counting down the seconds. Nora lets it ring. The machine clicks on.

“Nora! Call me, please. Please? Why haven't I heard from you? I keep leaving messages. I'm very worried. Something's wrong, I know it is … You're not mad at me, are you?”

This time Nora snatches up the phone. Kay sounds tired, weak, but so far she hasn't been sick, she says. Her hair started falling out after her second chemo treatment so she's had the rest shaved off. She wants Nora to come by and see her in her new wig. Nora says she'll try, she's just not sure when. There's no hiding the coldness she feels. Not even anger, just disinterest.

“Are you all right?” Kay finally asks.

“I'm fine.”

“No, you're not. I can tell. I know you too well.”

“I guess that's the mistake we both made, isn't it?” Nora laughs. She can't help it.

“What do you mean? Tell me. Please, Nora. Please,” Kay gasps.

No, she decides in the long silence. She can't do this. What's the point? But then it erupts, her spew of accusation flattening Kay's denial. It wasn't like that. No, she never … it never … he didn't … there wasn't … nothing like that … once, just a stupidly weak and silly thing … met him for dinner, that was all, then felt so horrible she actually got up from the table and called a cab to take her home. He kept calling. It went on for weeks, until she finally asked Oliver to tell him to stop. Afterward, Nora won't remember the words, just the same pangs of fear she felt as a child wanting to see, but scared of leaning too far as she dropped stone after stone to the bottom of the deep well behind the house where her mother and the Boston cousins gabbed inside, smoking cigarettes, then said they didn't, hadn't, wouldn't ever, even though her mother reeked of it, her one vice.

In the afternoon the rain still falls. Nora and the children are driving home from the elegant Sea Cliff Manor in Salem, where they used to go as a family on special