to sleep, most nights; the bottles of beer and whiskey; textbooks and notebooks tossed under the coffee table, gathering dust. Then she fixed her eyes on me. “How are you?” she asked.
“Never been better.”
I was trying to provoke her, but she ignored my sarcasm altogether. After a moment, she said, “I heard from Detective Coleman.”
So this was why she’d come. Just this, nothing else.
“I can’t believe A.J. killed my dad, then let his father take the fall for him.” She shook her head in disbelief. “And we would never have known if not for that traffic stop.”
“I had no idea it would lead to this,” I said with a shrug. It hadn’t occurred to me simply because I didn’t know what it was like to have a father like Anderson Baker, who would have sacrificed anything to keep his son safe.
“Either way, thank you, Jeremy.”
I gave a quick nod of acknowledgment. Still, the sound of my name on her lips brought fresh pain. Go, I thought. Go. Make it quick. The doorbell rang again. Relieved at the interruption, I went to answer. It was Joe, the delivery guy. I’d been ordering from the Indian place two or three times a week, and there were days when Joe was the only person I talked to that I wasn’t working with or trying to put in jail. “Hey, man,” he said cheerfully, handing me the paper bag with the receipt stapled to it, the total highlighted in yellow marker. “It’s $21 even. Samosas were half off tonight.”
I took the bills from my wallet again and quickly counted out $25.
“Is that your girlfriend?” he asked, glancing over my shoulder.
“What?”
Joe broke into a smile. “Your girlfriend? She’s cute.”
I handed him the money and took the brown bag, kicking the door closed with one leg. The smell of warm naan and garlic and lamb wafted from the bag, but I didn’t feel hungry anymore. I set the food on the kitchen counter, and when I turned around, I found Nora in the doorway. To be this close to her was unbearable. A knot formed in my throat and I had to swallow hard before I could speak. My words came out halfway between a cry and a question. “You just left.”
She came to stand against the counter, across from me. “I thought everything that happened before was going to happen again. Only with me, instead of my dad.”
“I told you, I would never let Fierro hurt you.”
“That’s not something you can promise.”
“So you leave? You don’t call, you don’t write, you just disappear. It’s like I meant nothing to you, like I was just a crutch you got rid of when you didn’t need it anymore. You just moved on.”
“I didn’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m just as broken as before.”
All I’d wanted was to take care of her, and somehow I had managed to do the opposite. “I fucked up,” I said. “I know I fucked up.”
She touched my arm, and in that instant the memories came back in a flood. How she’d leaned into me the first time I’d kissed her, out there in the desert. How she’d pressed her lips against my skin when I’d told her about Fletcher. The Neruda poem she’d slipped into the pocket of my jeans while I was in the shower one morning and that I’d found when I was fumbling for my keys later, in the parking lot of the Stater Brothers. I’d stood beside my car with the ten-pound ice bag I’d just bought melting in the sun, and read it again and again. I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries / the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself. It was the closest she’d ever come to telling me she loved me. The few weeks I’d had with her were the barometer against which the rest of my life was measured. A moment earlier, I’d been so angry with her I’d wanted her to leave, and now I felt light-headed with longing. “I miss you,” I whispered.