“No, you’re right,” he says. “Not here.”
“We don’t have many options,” I point out.
“When we finally do this, Nora,” he says, straightening away from me, his hands slipping my buttons back into buttonholes as easily as he undid them, “it’s not going to be on a library table, and it’s not going to be on a time crunch.” He smooths my hair, tucks my blouse back into my skirt, then takes my hips in his hands and guides me off the table, catching me against him. “We’re going to do this right. No shortcuts.”
23
I LEAVE THE LIBRARY on shaky legs, heart racing like I’m forty minutes deep into spin class. I’ve gone hours without checking my phone, and the usual emails have accumulated—one from my boss, who rarely honors the concept of the weekend, and a slew from clients who feel similarly—along with a string of texts from Libby.
I squint against the sunlight to see the pictures she sent of the progress she made today. The Goode Books café now looks snug and cozy, and the window display of SUMMER FAVORITES is lined in twinkly lights. In most of the pictures, Sally stands off to one side, beaming, but in one wonky shot that includes a good portion of someone’s thumb, Libby stands with arms flung wide and a huge smile on her face, silky pink bun lopsided atop her head.
Her heart-shaped face looks more or less the same as when she was fourteen years old and got accepted into the high school art show: proud, confident, capable. Even with all the weirdness between us, it makes me so happy to see her like that.
Looks amazing! I tell her. You’re a wunderkind!! Can’t even tell it’s the same place!!!
Thanks! she replies. Everything all right? Not like you to be late.
I was supposed to meet her at Poppa Squat’s ten minutes ago. I type back, All good. Be there in a minute.
I just have a call to make first. I stop at one of the green benches along the street, the metal hot from baking in the sun, and dig through my purse for the phone number Shepherd gave me. Maybe it’s old-school of me to follow up with someone to let him know I’m not interested, but Shepherd’s a nice guy. He deserves better than long-form ghosting.
The line rings three times before someone picks up, a woman’s voice saying, “Dent, Hopkins, and Morrow. How may I help you?”
After a second of confusion, I say, “I’m looking for Shepherd?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, “there’s no one here by that name.”
“Um, can I—who is this?” I say.
“This is Tyra,” she says, “at the law offices of Dent, Hopkins, and Morrow.”
“I must . . . have the wrong number.” I hang up and feel around in my purse until I find a receipt with chicken-scratch numbers on it. This is the one Shepherd gave me. The number I just called . . . must’ve been the one Sally gave me. For your sister. I dug up the number she asked for.
I could use some food to soak up the gallon of coffee I drank today, but it’s not just over-caffeination making my hands shake as I type the name of the law office into a Google search.
When the results appear, it’s like someone injected ice into my veins.
Dent, Hopkins & Morrow: Family Law Attorneys
Libby asked Sally . . . for the number of a divorce lawyer? For an instant, the street, the stone walkway, the pale blue sky, the world feels like it’s being shredded into ribbons. My lungs are overinflated, something large and heavy blocking anything from getting in or out.
I’m back in our old apartment, in those terrible weeks after Mom died, watching Libby fall apart, holding her tight while she sobs, until she can’t breathe, until she’s gagging.
I’m drowning in her pain, my own hardening, calcifying into my heart.
I don’t want to be alone, she sometimes gasps, or else, We’re alone. We’re all alone, Nora.
I’m holding her tight, burying my mouth in her hair and promising she’s wrong, that she’ll never be alone.
I have you, I tell her. I’ll always have you.
All those nights I jarred awake and found it all still there waiting for me: Mom gone. No money. Libby breaking.
Sometimes she cried in her sleep. Other times I woke while she was in the bathroom, and the cold spot in the bed beside me sent me into a panic.
In those days, pain waited like a shadowy monster, towering over our bed, and instead of shrinking night by night, it grew, feeding on us, getting fat with our grief.
Early one morning, we lay wrapped under the blankets and I smoothed my sister’s strawberry hair, and she whispered, I just don’t want to be here anymore. I want it to stop.
And that same cold panic grew too big for my body, swelling, throbbing angrily.
Without thinking about money or work or school or any of the millions of practicalities for which I’d become responsible, I said, Then let’s go somewhere.
And we did.
Bought round-trip, middle-of-the-week, red-eye tickets to Los Angeles. Checked into a seedy motel whose dead bolt didn’t work and wedged the desk chair under the knob while we slept each night.
Every morning, we took a cab to the beach and stayed there until dinner, always something cheap and greasy. We took some of Mom’s ashes and dumped them in the ocean when no one was looking, then ran away, shrieking and laughing, unsure whether we’d just broken a law.
Later, we’d split the rest of the ashes between the East River and the Hudson, bits of Mom on either side of our city, hemming us in, holding us. But we weren’t ready to let go of that much of her yet.
For one whole week, Libby didn’t cry, and then, on the plane home, during takeoff, she looked out the window, watching the water shrink beneath us, and whispered, When will it stop hurting?
I don’t know, I told her, knowing she’d see I was lying. That I believed it would never stop, not ever.
She descended into ugly, wrenching sobs, and the other passengers shot tired glares in our direction. I ignored them, pulled Libby into my chest. Let it out, sweet girl, I murmured, just like Mom used to say to us.
A flight attendant either overestimated our ages or took pity on us, and discreetly dropped off two miniature liquor bottles.
Through her hiccups, Libby chose the Bailey’s. I drank the gin.
Ever since that day, I couldn’t so much as smell it without thinking about holding tight to my sister, about missing Mom so much that she felt closer than she had in weeks.
Maybe that’s why it’s the only thing I really drink. Feeling that hole in your heart is better than feeling nothing at all.
I blink clear of the memory, but the pain in my chest, the ache deep in my hands don’t let up. I sink onto the hot metal of the bench and count out the seconds of my inhalations, matching them to my exhalations.