A Field Guide to Deception by Jill Malone Page A

moves you. It shifts you from one spot to another. Simple. Easy. You’re there and then, in a moment, you’re here. Live here. Exist in this space. Be brave enough to stay.’
    â€œI wrote it down in my notebook in the car. The whole thing. It fucking shook me. The way she said it as much as anything. I memorized it and I say it to myself sometimes like I’m saying a prayer. It hurt me. Her saying that hurt me, it was so beautiful.
    â€œAnd it’s true, what she said. It’s true and I want my crash. I want to be moved like that: shifted from one spot to another.” Bailey smacked her palms together.
    Claire found herself trembling. She couldn’t articulate why, even in her own head, but she was shaking. She thought of the money in the broken cupboard; she had taken it without a moment’s hesitation. She had not considered even, had simply known that she would take as much as she could carry, and then return for the rest. Simple. Easy. You’re there and then, in a moment, you’re here.
    Love was like that, yes, but so was freedom.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Bailey said. “I’m talking too much. I just met you. You’re like Liv and not like her all at once. It’s intoxicating.” She laughed, shook her head like an apology, and drank again.
    â€œI’m interested,” Claire said. “I don’t mind.”
    â€œWould you have wanted any of the girls that came up to you tonight? I mean, on their own account, would you have approached any of them?”
    Claire thought of the girls: young, almost foolishly young, and more than a little helpless. “No.”
    â€œI keep thinking of Liv as that genius I met in school. The quiet one, the unassuming one, and now she’s going through girls like they’re heroin. How do you reconcile that?”
    â€œYou’re in love with her.” Claire knew this was true, yet it startled her: the thought as well as the statement. Across the table, Bailey nodded.
    â€œYes. I’m in love with her.”

    â€œWhat will you do?” Claire asked. She worried for Bailey’s love. For the weight of it on the table between them, and inside Bailey, for the despondency of this love, she worried.
    Bailey shook her head. “I’ve no idea. What about you?”
    â€œWhat about me?”
    â€œHave you had your collision?”
    Claire’s mind brought Simon forward in answer to Bailey’s question. Surprising and true, she realized. Simon was her collision. “I have a three-year-old. He changed everything.”
    Bailey looked confused a moment, her hooded brown eyes suddenly wholly open. “But it’s not the same. I mean, parental love is more definite, isn’t it. Clearer.”
    â€œYes, but no less moving.”
    Bailey shook her head. “No. Too easy. A child isn’t a collision. For one thing, you choose to have one, don’t you? Can’t choose love, though. Can’t choose a wreck. Just fucking happens, doesn’t it?”
    Claire agreed. She liked this woman across from her. She liked her vulnerability, her obstinate mind.
    â€œHave you never had a collision either?”
    â€œNo,” Claire said. “I guess not.”
    â€œFucking Spokane.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead. “But a kid, that’s something. Some meaning anyway. Did you have him on your own?”
    â€œHis father was in a band. It was all stupid really, that part. And then Simon, and it didn’t seem stupid at all. It was supposed to happen, exactly like it did.”
    â€œIn a band?” Bailey seemed affronted by this. “So you slept with some drummer or something?”
    â€œBassist, yeah.”
    â€œSo you’re not a lesbian?”
    Claire laughed.
    â€œLet me guess,” Bailey said. “It’s complicated.”

    They agreed to walk to a diner for coffee and breakfast. It was nearly two in the morning, and neither