know you can hear me!” Inhale, exhale, inhale. “I know you’re back there, so let me tell you this.” Inhale. “Even if the police say you’re innocent, I know that you’re guilty.” Inhale. “Guilty of leaving Joe to die.” Inhale, exhale, cough, swallow. Her hands were shaking. Inhale. “You are the one to blame here.” Inhale, exhale, lump rising, swallow it down, swallow. “And I hope you think about that every day for the rest of your life. I hope—”
Renee stopped. A group of people had appeared beside the bar, standing in front of a long, plush curtain that Renee hadn’t noticed before, so seamlessly did it blend into the shadowed spaces at the edge of the room. A dark old man wearing a long white apron and loose, black-and-white-checked trousers approached her, his rubber shoes squeaking over the polished floor.
“Ma’am, we need you to leave the restaurant,” the man said. “We’ll call the police if you don’t go right now.” He did not look at her with anger. Renee sensed a certain sympathy, but his voice was firm. “You’re causing a scene,” he told her.
Yes, Renee was. She was causing a scene. There was no one here to see it, except these few kitchen workers, but she was indeed making a spectacle of herself. Renee gazed at the group: a young woman, pretty and heavily made up, a man who looked barely out of his teens with a thin, wispy mustache, a muscular man with his head shaved clean. All gazed at her with apprehension and resistance and an unmistakable hostility. They were defending Luna, she realized. They were protecting her.
The old man’s eyes were mild, his voice restrained, and yet Renee almost hit him. She almost kicked him. She pondered for one long moment the relief that delivering these blows would bring her. Perhaps he would hit her in return with his small fists—he was shorter than she was and older, frailer. Or maybe the bartender—the strength of those arms, the unyielding force of his mammoth knuckles. Wasn’t that what she really wanted? To be obliterated?
“Please,” said the man again. “Please leave.”
Renee became aware of the dim sound of a woman weeping. Or was it her own? Had she started to cry again, as she had so many times these past six days, without realizing it? The sound reminded Renee of herself, the alternating restraint and release, the familiar low moans. Who was crying?
“I . . . I . . .” Renee said, and shame came down like a sack thrown over her head. Shame and guilt, loyal partners until the end. What had Luna done to Joe that Renee hadn’t done herself on that balcony two years before?
“Renee.” Renee turned and saw Fiona and Caroline standing in the doorway. She remained motionless, unsure which way to turn—toward the old man, the bartender, or back the way she had come, toward her sisters. Turning around felt like a retreat, like an acceptance of the worst possible outcome. We did all that we could. Her own voice droned in her head with the words she’d been taught to say after a patient’s death. I am sorry to inform you . . . So sorry . . .
Renee felt strong, capable hands on her shoulders. Here were her sisters.
“I’m sorry I took the—” Renee began, but they both shook their heads.
Renee always thought of her sisters as they’d been during the Pause: so little, so in need of care. Caroline with her nightmares, Fiona walling herself away in her own fantasy world with her books and notepads, her lists of funny words. All that time Renee had worried that she was failing them, that some irreparable damage was being wrought. But her sisters had become women, and their strength was all around her. Renee could lean against them, and now, at last, she did.
Part IV
After
Year 2079
Year 2079
The young Luna had moved up to the first section, a few rows back from the stage. Absently she played with a necklace, a simple silver chain that fell against her chest, heavy with some sort of charm. A circle, perhaps. Or a ring.
“So there was a real Luna,” the girl said. “My mother was right.”
“Yes, there was a real Luna.”
“What happened to her?”
The auditorium remained full. Hours it had been now, the power still gone, generator humming steadily along. We’d heard the sirens twice more, but without the evacuation signal. It seemed inevitable that it would come. This was why I stayed at