here.â
âI just thought an in-person visit might, uh, underscore...â
âYes. Definitely. We want to be a burr on their ass. Then I want to go back to Black Creek. When I was there the other day I couldnât get anywhere with the desk girls. Dumb as stumps. The managerâs supposed to be there today, and we can get the boysâ things. You got your ID, right?â
âShower for Capp... Capp...â a female voice came on the intercom.
âCapparelli,â Shay said. âItâs not that hard! Listen, you go ahead and take the first shower if you want. Finish eating, though, let them wait a few minutes, they wonât give it away.â
Colleen crammed down the eggs and a single triangle of toast. She took her things and headed back to the counter, where the clerk pointed down the hall. âNumber four.â
Inside was much better than she had expected. It was like a hotel bathroom, except that every surface but the ceiling was tiled. On the floor, one corner dampened and stuck to the tile, was a rectangle of paper labeled BATH MAT in blue lettering. A blue plastic trash can with a fresh liner was the only other industrial touch. A long counter held a folded towel with a paper-wrapped bar of soap on top.
Colleen took a deep breath and looked at herself in the mirror. The past few days had taken a toll on her. The bulb in the motor home bathroom had been blessedly dim, so sheâd been able to pretend the dark circles and sunken flesh were the result of bad lighting. Here, under the bright fluorescents, every wrinkle and pore was on display. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot, the lids puffy, the lines at the corners like her motherâs before she died. Her skin looked like it had been carved from wax, yellowish and sagging. Her lips had no color, disappearing into her face like an old womanâs.
Was this what grief looked like? Colleen reached out and touched her image with her fingers, leaving a smudge. She took the washcloth Shay had given her and wiped the glass. She was a wiper of smudges. A cleaner of countertops. A vacuumer of crumbs. Only... it was Paulâs fingerprints, his jam smears, the remains of his pizza crusts to which she had devoted herself for so long. Since the day he left for Syracuse a year and a half ago, his absence had withered her, scouring out what was left inside and draining any traces of youth that remained on the outside. Sheâd been fifty when he graduated from high school, Zumba-fit and pampered, the envy of her friends, the recipientâstill!âof the occasional drunken pass at neighborhood dinner parties. Now she was... this.
And if he was really gone? Forever? What then?
Colleen gasped, doubling over, elbows on the cold countertop, unable to breathe. She closed her eyes and murmured no, no, no. Because she didnât mean gone. She meant dead.
Dead.
She hadnât allowed herself to think the shape of the word until now. It had hovered, slinking around the edge of her consciousness, ever since the missed Sunday call. A mere shadowy wraith first, as the hours and days passed, it had become more insistent, waiting for her to slip, to forget for one second, to fall into incautious sleep. But sheâd been so careful. So careful! Under her clothes her thighs and inner arms were bruised from where she pinched herself. Because thatâs what she did. Every time that cursed thought threatenedâ dead âshe punished herself until the pain forced it to recede.
But here, in the mirror, was evidence that she hadnât escaped the fear at all: the proof was in her faceâs wornness, its ugliness. Colleen pushed herself up from the counter and tore at her clothes. One of her blouseâs buttons popped off in her clumsy fingers. She yanked her panties off along with her pants. She unsnapped her bra and ripped it off her arms and threw it; it landed behind the toilet. Her socks ended up nearby. There. There!
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