What the Living Bury: The Woman at The Rest Stop

Sal Boyd's coffee had gone cold again. He sat at the laminate counter of the diner three miles south of the Ashcroft gate, the same booth where he'd eaten his lunch for nineteen years, and watched the sun slide toward the treetops. The waitress, whose face he knew but whose name kept slipping, refilled his cup without asking. He wrapped his hands around the warmth and let the steam fog the edge of his glasses.

Boone Caskey had called at four. That was unusual. Boone called in the mornings, or not at all, and when he did call, his voice carried the particular flatness of a man delivering news he wished he could unsay. This time the flatness was thicker. Boone said the words "remains" and "ledger" and "Quill" in the same breath, and Sal had set down his fork.

Now he waited.

The highway noise had thinned with the light. A diesel rig ground past on the interstate, its headlights already on, and somewhere a screen banged in a wind he couldn't feel from inside. Sal lifted his cup, found the coffee lukewarm, and set it down. He watched the entrance. The bell above the door had a tinny, apologetic sound, and he'd heard it twice since he'd sat down. Once for a teenager in a ball cap. Once for a man buying cigarettes.

Neither had been her.

He thought about the house. Not the whole house, the way tourists thought of it, with its turrets and widow's walks and the gossip columns it had once inspired. He thought about the kitchen, specifically, and the way the radiator under the east window knocked twice every morning at six-fifteen, and the smell of the wainscoting in the back hall, which was beeswax and old pine and, if you pressed your nose close, something mineral and old that he had never been able to name. He thought about the small things, the ones that made a place a place, and he thought about how those things did not survive the people who tended them.

He thought about Russell Ashcroft.

He thought about the journal, and the way Russell's handwriting had changed in the last pages, the letters smaller, the lines drifting upward as though even on paper the man had been trying to rise toward something he could not reach.

Sal removed his glasses. Cleaned them on the hem of his flannel. Replaced them.

The waitress glanced at him. He gave her the small nod that meant he was fine, that he was waiting, that she should not worry. She turned back to the register.

Sal had worked the Ashcroft property since he was twenty-eight. He had been twenty-eight when Russell's father, the old man with the white mustache and the voice like a cello, had hired him to fix a gutter and had kept him on to fix every other thing that broke, and some things that had not yet broken but would. He had been there when the greenhouses were full and the grounds were mowed and the gravel drives were raked in patterns so precise you could have read the time off them. He had been there when the money began to leave, in small leaks at first, and then in greater ones, and he had been there when Russell, who had been a laughing boy and then a serious man and then something quieter still, had begun to walk the lower halls at night with a cup he never drank from.

He knew the rhythms. He knew which stair creaked and which one didn't, and which windows leaked in a hard rain, and which of the thermostats in the back parlors had been jury-rigged with a paperclip since 1994. He knew the house the way a body knows its own pulse.

The bell rang.

Mara Quill walked in.

She was smaller than he remembered from the funeral two days ago, or perhaps he was simply seeing her now without the crowd to dilute the impression. Dark hair cut blunt at the jaw. A face that gave nothing for free. She wore a black coat buttoned to the throat, and her hands, he noticed, were bare, the nails cut short and clean, no rings, no watches, the way hands look when their owner needs them to be ready for work.

Behind her, a half step, came Ivy Ren. Younger, brighter, a face that seemed to be in the middle of saying something. A camera bag over one shoulder. A paper cup in her hand, the kind with a corrugated sleeve.

Sal stood. His knees popped. He gestured to the booth.

"You came," he said.

Mara slid onto the seat across from him. Ivy slid in beside her, setting the camera bag on the table with a muffled thump.

"You said the word remains," Mara said. "I came."

"I did," Sal said. "I did say that."

The waitress appeared. Mara ordered black coffee. Ivy ordered something with whipped cream, and when the waitress raised an eyebrow, Ivy smiled in a way that made the woman smile back.

"I want to tell you what's in there before we go in," Sal said. "I want you to hear it from me, and not from the floors."

Mara studied him. Her eyes were the color of strong tea, and they did not blink more than they needed to.

"All right," she said. "Tell me."

Sal folded his hands on the table. He looked at them. They were the hands of a man who had spent his life fixing things, and they were still strong, and the knuckles were swollen in the way that knuckles swell when the weather is about to change.

"Russell kept a ledger," he said. "Not the kind the accountants use. A small one, leather, the kind you'd buy at a bookstore in the city. He kept it in the library, in the panel behind the radiator. I knew about it because I fixed that radiator more times than I can count, and once, when he was out of the house for a week, I pulled it free to get at a valve, and I saw the shelf behind it, and I saw what was on the shelf, and I put it back and I didn't say a word."

Ivy had stopped stirring her drink.

"He started keeping it the year his wife died," Sal said. "I don't know what he wrote first. I don't know if the first page was a list or a sentence. But by the end there were names in it. I know because I saw the pages, once, when I brought him his lunch and he'd fallen asleep in the chair with the book open on his chest, and I covered him with a blanket and I didn't look. But I saw the page. The page nearest the spine. There were seven names on it. Seven women. Each one with a date beside her name. And beside three of the dates, a single word."

He paused.

"The word was gone," he said. "I mean, the word was 'gone.' Three dates, three words. Three gone."

The diner hummed around them. The coffee maker hissed. A spoon clinked against a ceramic mug two tables over.

"And the other four?" Mara said.

"Unfinished," Sal said. "Or unfinished, anyway. Some of the names had only a date. Some had a date and a town. One had a date and a town and the word 'still.' I don't know what any of it meant. I know only that Russell stopped sleeping, and that he stopped eating, and that he walked the house at night with a cup he never drank from, and that on the last morning I saw him alive, he shook my hand in the front hall, and he said my name twice, and he said, 'When they come, let them in.'"

"Who comes?" Ivy said.

"He didn't say," Sal said. "He only said 'when.'"

Mara's coffee arrived. She wrapped her hands around the mug, the way he had wrapped his, and the steam rose between them and dissolved.

"The ledger," she said. "You said it was behind the radiator."

"It was," Sal said. "It is."

"You've been in the house," Mara said.

"I went in this morning," Sal said. "Boone asked me to. I went in and I made sure the windows were shut and the pipes weren't frozen and the animals hadn't gotten in through the cellar. And I went into the library, and I pulled the panel, and the ledger was there. It was on the shelf, just where it had been. The clasp was closed."

"And?" Mara said.

"And I didn't open it," Sal said. "It's not mine to open. It's not mine to read. It was Russell's, and now it's the estate's, and the estate is Russell's sister, and the sister is in the city, and the sister hasn't come, and won't come, and the house is sitting up there on the hill with the windows shut and the pipes quiet and the ledger waiting."

He looked at her.

"I'm asking you to read it," he said. "I'm asking you to read it and to do what you do, and to tell me what it means."

Mara was quiet for a long moment. The diner noise pressed in, and then receded, and then pressed in again.

"What I do," she said, "is clean."

"Russell knew that," Sal said. "Russell watched you clean after his father died. He stood in the door of the bedroom for the whole hour you were in there, and he didn't speak, and he didn't leave. He told me afterward that he had never seen anyone do a thing with such quiet attention. He said it was the closest he had ever come to watching someone pray."

Mara's mouth did something that was not quite a smile. Her eyes stayed the same.

"I don't pray," she said.

"No ma'am," Sal said. "I know you don't. He knew that too. He meant the shape of it. The attention."

Ivy set her cup down.

"What's in the bedroom?" Ivy said. "At the funeral, you said the word remains, but you didn't say where."

"The bedroom off the upper hall," Sal said. "The one with the blue door."

"That's where he died," Mara said.

"That's where he died," Sal said.

"Then there's nothing left for me to do in there," Mara said. "The county's coroner will have come. The deputy will have come. The funeral home will have come. The room will have been walked through and walked away from. What's left for me is the grief, and the grief is not a thing I clean."

"No ma'am," Sal said. "I understand that. I'm not asking you to clean the bedroom. I'm asking you to clean the rest of the house. I'm asking you to go through the house, room by room, and to do what you would do if a body had been in every one of them, because to me, and to Boone, and to the woman who cleaned for Russell when I was not there, it feels as though a body has been in every one of them. The house has the smell of a wake."

Ivy glanced at Mara. Mara did not glance back.

"You want me to clean the house," Mara said, "and you want me to read the ledger."

"I want you to clean the house," Sal said. "I want you to read the ledger."

"In that order," Mara said.

"Ma'am," Sal said, "I don't care about the order. I only want it read."

Mara lifted her cup. She drank. She set it down. The sound it made on the laminate was the smallest sound in the diner, and it was the loudest thing Sal had heard all day.

"All right," she said. "We'll go up tonight."

Sal let out a breath. He had not known, until that moment, how tightly he had been holding it.

"There's one more thing," he said.

"Tell me," Mara said.

"There's a rest stop," Sal said. "On the way up. Two miles past the road that used to go to the dairy. The state tore the dairy down in '09, but the road is still there, and the rest stop is still there, because the state never tore down rest stops, only dairies. The rest stop has a women's restroom. The restroom has a mirror over the sink."

He paused. He had not rehearsed this part. He had thought he would be able to, on the drive up, but the drive had been short, and the words had not arranged themselves.

"I stopped there this morning," he said. "On the way to the house. The door was open. The light was off. I went in to wash my hands, because the faucet at the house is frozen, and I had to pry it, and I had dirt under my nails. I went into the men's, and I washed my hands, and I came out. Ivy was in the car."

"I was in the car," Ivy said.

"I came out," Sal said, "and I stood by the hood, and I was looking at the map on my phone, and the women's door opened, and a woman came out. I don't know where she'd been. I don't know how long she'd been in there. I only saw her for a second, maybe two, and then she was around the corner of the building, and then she was gone."

"What did she look like?" Mara said.

"She was gray," Sal said. "Not old. Not young. Gray. Her hair was gray, and her coat was gray, and her shoes were gray. She had a suitcase with her, the kind that rolls. The suitcase was gray."

"And?" Mara said.

"And she was humming," Sal said. "I could hear the hum, just for a second, before she turned the corner. It was a tune I knew. It was a tune Russell's wife used to sing in the greenhouses, when she was pruning the orchids. I had not heard that tune in eleven years. I have not heard it since the morning of her funeral."

Mara set her cup down. The cup made its small sound again.

"That's the rest stop," Sal said. "I don't know what it means. I only know what I saw."

Mara looked at Ivy. Ivy looked at Mara. Something passed between them that Sal could not read, and he suspected they had a language he was not meant to learn.

"We'll go up," Mara said. "We'll stop at the rest stop. We'll go in."

"Ma'am," Sal said, "I would be grateful."

Mara nodded. The nod was small, and it was final. Sal finished his coffee, and it was cold again, and he did not mind.

Sal paid for the coffee and left a quarter on the counter for the kid, because the kid had refilled his cup without being asked, and that was worth a quarter. The bell above the door rang twice when they left, once for Sal and once for Mara. Ivy did not set the bell off. Ivy came through the door like she was made of smoke.

The parking lot was still hot. The sun had climbed a little higher, and the light had changed from yellow to white, and the shadows under Mara's Civic had shrunk. Sal's truck was at the far end of the lot, where he had parked it earlier that morning, when he had not yet known that he would be a witness to something he did not understand. He looked at the truck and felt the distance between where it sat and where he stood, and the distance felt longer than it had any right to be.

"Which way to the rest stop?" Mara said.

"North on the 9," Sal said. "Forty minutes. Maybe fifty, depending on the construction near the quarry."

"We'll take my car," Mara said.

"Yes," Ivy said, and she was already walking toward the Civic.

Sal looked at his truck. He looked at the Civic. He took his keys out of his pocket and held them in his hand, and the keys felt heavier than keys should feel. He did not want to leave his truck in a parking lot in a town he had only stopped in for coffee, but he also did not want to follow the Civic in his truck, because following felt like something he was not supposed to do. He put the keys back in his pocket.

"Your truck will be fine here," Mara said, and she did not look at him when she said it. "The diner has cameras. I've seen them."

"How did you see them?"

"I see things," Mara said.

Sal did not ask what that meant. He followed her across the lot, and his boots made small sounds on the asphalt, and the small sounds were the only sounds in the lot besides the hum of the Civic's engine when Ivy started it. The Civic sounded like a cat purring. Sal's truck sounded like a truck. He missed it already.

He got into the back seat. The back seat smelled like old coffee and something sweet he could not name, and the seat was softer than he had expected, and the headrest smelled like Mara's shampoo, which smelled like nothing. He buckled his seat belt, because he always buckled his seat belt, even when he was in his own truck, even when he was in his own driveway.

Ivy backed out of the lot. Mara turned in her seat and looked at him, and the look was not unfriendly, but it was not friendly either. It was the look of someone deciding whether to ask the question she was about to ask, and Sal had seen that look on the faces of women his whole life, because women were the ones who asked the questions that mattered, and men were the ones who answered them or did not answer them, and either way the women already knew.

"Tell me about Russell," Mara said.

"Russell," Sal said, and the name felt strange in his mouth, because he had not said it out loud in a long time. He said it again, under his breath, just to feel it. "Russell. Russell Ashcroft. I started on the estate in '94. Russell was already here. He was the third generation. His grandfather had built the place in the twenties, his father had run it in the fifties, and Russell ran it now, or he had run it until he didn't. He was a quiet man. A careful man. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. The house listened to him. The grounds listened to him. Even the orchids listened to him, and orchids don't listen to anyone."

"And his wife?"

"Rosalind," Sal said, and the name felt stranger, because he had not said it out loud in eleven years. "Rosalind. She was from the city. She came out here in '85, the year before they got married, and she never left, and she never wanted to leave, and she sang in the greenhouses because the greenhouses were warm and the orchids liked the sound of her voice, or so she said, and I believed her, because the orchids bloomed better when she sang, and Russell believed her too, because Russell believed everything Rosalind said, because Rosalind was the only person in the world who had ever told Russell the truth."

"Tell me about the day she died."

The Civic was on the road now. The road was straight. The fields on either side were flat and green, and the sky above them was wide and blue, and the sky did not care what Sal said or did not say. Sal watched the fields and the sky, and he told Mara about the day Rosalind died.

"It was a Tuesday," he said. "I remember that, because Tuesdays were the days the orchids got fed, and I was in the east greenhouse, feeding the orchids, and Rosalind was in the west greenhouse, pruning, and she was singing, and I could hear her through the wall, and the song was the one I heard yesterday, the one the gray woman was humming, and then the song stopped, and I thought she had moved to another row, and I went back to my feeding, and then I heard the crash."

"What crash?"

"The glass," Sal said. "The west greenhouse had a wall of glass, floor to ceiling, and something had broken through it, and I ran, and when I got there Rosalind was on the floor, and the glass was on the floor, and there was glass in her, and there was glass in the orchids, and the song was gone, and the song has been gone ever since, until yesterday, at the rest stop, when the gray woman hummed it, and I have not been able to think about anything else since."

"What broke the glass?"

"They never found out," Sal said. "There was a rock on the floor. Just a rock. A river rock, smooth and gray, the kind you find in the creek at the bottom of the property. But there was no one there. There were no footprints. There were no tire tracks. There was just the rock and Rosalind and the glass and the orchids, and the orchids kept blooming, because orchids don't know when to stop."

Mara was quiet for a long time. The Civic ate the road in silence. Sal watched the fields go by, and the fields were the same fields he had watched his whole life, and they did not look any different, even though everything was different.

"Sal," Mara said, finally. "What did Rosalind look like?"

"Blonde," Sal said, and the word came out before he could stop it, and he heard himself say it, and he heard how it sounded, and he kept going. "Blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin. She was tall. She was thin. She moved like a deer. She smelled like the orchids, or the orchids smelled like her, I never could tell. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of women, because I have been alive for sixty-two years, and I have looked at every one of them, and Rosalind was the one."

"And the woman at the rest stop?"

"Gray," Sal said. "All gray. Like she had been left out in the rain. Like she had been washed too many times. Like she had been bleached. But her face, when I saw it, just for a second, her face was Rosalind's face. The bones were Rosalind's bones. The eyes were Rosalind's eyes. But the hair was gray, and the coat was gray, and the suitcase was gray, and the hum was Rosalind's hum."

"And she went around the corner of the building," Mara said. "And you did not follow."

"I did not follow," Sal said. "I could not move. My boots were on the asphalt, and the asphalt was hot, and my boots were stuck to the asphalt, or I was stuck to my boots, and the gray woman went around the corner, and I stayed where I was, and I watched the corner where she had been, and she did not come back, and then Ivy came out of the rest stop, and Ivy said the women's room was empty, and Ivy said there was no one inside, and Ivy said she had looked under every stall, and I believed Ivy, because Ivy has the kind of face you believe, even when you don't want to."

Ivy laughed from the front seat. The laugh was short, and it was not entirely a joke.

"I do have that kind of face," Ivy said. "It's a curse."

"It's a gift," Mara said.

"It's a curse," Ivy said. "People tell me things. People tell me things in line at the grocery store. People tell me things on the subway. People tell me things in rest-stop women's rooms. I know more about the state of the world than I want to know, and most of what I know is sad, and none of it is useful."

"It's useful to me," Mara said.

"It's useful to you because you pay me in coffee and bad decisions," Ivy said.

"I pay you in coffee and good decisions," Mara said. "You make the bad ones. I clean up after."

The banter went on like that for a while, and Sal listened to it, and the banter sounded like the banter of two people who had been friends for a long time, and Sal felt the back seat soften around him, and the bad feeling in his stomach softened a little too, because banter was a kind of medicine, and Sal had always believed in medicine.

They passed a sign that said REST STOP 2 MILES. The sign was white with blue letters, and the letters were faded, and the sign leaned a little to the left, as if it was tired. Sal sat up straighter in the back seat, and his seat belt tightened across his chest, and he did not adjust it, because he wanted to feel the tightness, because the tightness felt like something holding him to the moment, and the moment was where he needed to be.

"There's a trucker," Mara said. "A long-haul trucker. Sal, is there a trucker who parks here regular? Who would have seen something?"

"Sal Boyd," Sal said. "He parks there every third night. He runs the Seattle to Phoenix route. He has a dashcam. He has seen things before, because truckers see things, because truckers are on the road when the rest of the world is asleep, and the world does different things when it thinks no one is watching."

"What's his name?"

"Sal Boyd," Sal said, and then he stopped, because the name he had just said was his own name, and the name was also the name of the trucker he had just described, and he had not meant to say it, and now he had said it, and the words were in the air, and he could not take them back.

Mara looked at him in the rearview mirror. Ivy looked at him in the rearview mirror. The mirror showed two faces, and the faces were identical in their surprise, and the surprise was not unkind, but it was real.

"Sal," Mara said. "Your name is Sal Boyd."

"Yes," Sal said.

"And the trucker is also named Sal Boyd."

"There is no other Sal Boyd," Sal said. "I am the only Sal Boyd. The trucker is me. I was describing myself. I didn't mean to. I was thinking out loud, and I said the name, and the name was mine, and now you know."

"How long have you been driving the Seattle to Phoenix route?" Ivy said.

"Thirty-two years," Sal said. "I started in '91. Before Russell. Before the estate. I drove because I liked driving, and I still drive because I still like driving, and the route is the same route, and the rest stops are the same rest stops, and the world is different, and the world is the same, and I have seen a lot of things from the cab of my truck, and yesterday I saw the gray woman, and today I am in the back seat of a Civic with two women I met an hour ago, and my life is not what I thought it was going to be today."

Mara's hand moved to the dashcam mount on the windshield. The mount was empty. The dashcam was in her other hand. She had taken it out of Sal's pocket when he was not looking, or when he was looking and did not notice, because Mara had that kind of hand.

"You have dashcam footage," she said. "Of the gray woman. Of the two men. Of the SUV."

"I have," Sal said.

"And you'll give it to me."

"Yes," Sal said.

"For how much?"

Sal thought about it. He thought about the coffee. He thought about the quarter he had left for the kid. He thought about Russell, and Rosalind, and the greenhouses, and the rock on the floor of the west greenhouse, and the song that had been gone for eleven years and had come back for two seconds at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere.

"Five thousand dollars," Sal said. "And a cup of coffee. A hot one. With cream."

Mara looked at him in the mirror. Ivy looked at him in the mirror. The mirror showed two faces, and the faces were identical in their amusement, and the amusement was not unkind, and it was real.

"Five thousand dollars," Mara said. "And a cup of coffee."

"Hot," Sal said. "With cream."

"Sal," Ivy said, and her voice was warm, and the warmth was the kind of warmth that Sal had not heard in a long time, and the warmth made his throat tight, and he did not try to loosen it, because the tightness felt like something he needed to feel. "Sal Boyd. You are a piece of work."

"Yes," Sal said. "I am."

Mara drove. The highway unwound in front of them like a gray ribbon, and Sal sat in the back seat and watched the fields go by, and the fields were brown, and the sky was gray, and the radio played a song he did not know, and the song was not the one that Russell used to sing.

He did not sing along.

He thought about the song. He thought about the two seconds. He thought about the fact that the song had come back, and he thought about what that meant, and he did not have an answer, and the lack of an answer felt like a small stone in his chest, and the small stone was not heavy, and it was not light, and it was just there.

Ivy turned around in the front seat and looked at him. "You okay back there?"

"I'm okay," Sal said. "I'm thinking about a song."

"What song?"

"A song I haven't heard in a long time."

"The one from the rest stop?"

"Yes," Sal said. "The one from the rest stop."

Ivy nodded. She did not ask him what the song was. She did not ask him why it mattered. She understood that some things are not meant to be explained, and that the act of explaining them takes away the thing that makes them matter, and that the thing that makes them matter is the thing that cannot be explained.

They drove.

Mara drove. Sal sat. Ivy turned around and looked out the back window and watched the road disappear behind them, and the road was long, and the road was empty, and the emptiness was the kind of emptiness that comes after something has been, and the something that was is gone, and the gone-ness is the thing that is left.

Sal closed his eyes. He did not sleep. He thought about the rock. He thought about the quarter. He thought about the kid in the rest stop, and the kid's face, and the kid's eyes, and the way the kid had looked at him like Sal was something worth looking at, and the looking had been a gift, and the gift was the thing that Sal would carry with him, and the carrying was not heavy, and it was not light, and it was just there.

He thought about Russell. He thought about Rosalind. He thought about the greenhouses. He thought about the west greenhouse, and the rock on the floor, and the song that had been gone for eleven years, and the fact that the song had come back, and the fact that the song had come back at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere, and the fact that the gray woman had been there, and the two men, and the SUV, and the dashcam, and the five thousand dollars, and the cup of coffee.

He thought about the coffee. He thought about the cream. He thought about the fact that Mara had not said no to the coffee, and the not-saying-no was a kind of yes, and the yes was the thing that made him feel like the day had not been wasted, and the not-wasted was a small victory, and the small victory was enough.

He opened his eyes. The highway was still there. The fields were still brown. The sky was still gray. The radio was still playing a song he did not know, and the song was not the one that Russell used to sing, and the not-being-the-song was a relief, and the relief was the thing that allowed him to breathe.

They passed a sign for Hollow Bend. The sign was green and white, and the letters were bold, and the sign said POPULATION 2,847, and the population was wrong, and the wrong-ness was the thing that made Sal smile, because the sign had been there since he was a kid, and the population had not changed, and the not-changing was a kind of constancy, and the constancy was the thing that he loved about the place.

He did not love the place. He was fond of the place. He was used to the place. He was the kind of person who stays in a place because the staying is easier than the leaving, and the leaving is a thing he has never been good at, and the not-being-good-at-it is the thing that has kept him here, and the keeping-here is the thing that has kept him alive.

They turned off the highway. They took the two-lane road that led into town. They passed the gas station, and the gas station had a sign that said GAS 3.89, and the price was wrong, and the wrong-ness was a lie, and the lie was the thing that made Sal laugh, and the laugh was a real laugh, and the real-ness was the thing that made Ivy turn around and smile at him.

"You're laughing," she said.

"I'm laughing," Sal said. "The gas is three eighty-nine."

"It's not three eighty-nine."

"It's not," Sal said. "It's been four twelve for six months."

"And the sign still says three eighty-nine."

"And the sign still says three eighty-nine," Sal said. "Because the sign is a liar, and the liaring is a tradition, and the tradition is the thing that makes this town what it is."

"What is this town?"

"A town with a lying gas sign," Sal said.

They drove. They passed the diner, and the diner had a sign that said EAT, and the sign was old, and the old-ness was a kind of history, and the history was the thing that made the diner a landmark, and the landmark-ness was the thing that made people stop, and the stopping was the thing that kept the diner in business, and the business was the thing that kept the town alive.

They did not stop. They drove past the school, and the school was empty, and the empty-ness was the thing that made Sal sad, because the school had been full when he was a kid, and the full-ness was the thing that he remembered, and the remembering was the thing that made him feel old, and the old-ness was a thing he was not ready for.

They turned onto Main Street. They passed the bank, and the bank had a sign that said HOLLOW BEND COMMUNITY BANK, and the sign was new, and the new-ness was the thing that made Sal suspicious, because the bank had been HOLLOW BEND SAVINGS AND LOAN since he was a kid, and the changing was a kind of loss, and the loss was the thing that made him sigh.

They passed the hardware store. They passed the post office. They passed the barbershop, and the barbershop had a sign that said CLOSED, and the sign was permanent, and the permanence was the thing that made Sal nod, because the barbershop had been closed since Old Man Harkness died, and the dying was the thing that had ended the barbershop, and the ending was a kind of death, and the death was the thing that Sal understood.

He understood death. He had cleaned up after death for eleven years. He had seen the things that death leaves behind, and the things were not pretty, and the not-pretty was the thing that he had learned to live with, and the living-with was the thing that made him who he was.

He was Sal Boyd. He was fifty-eight years old. He had been in love once, and the once was with a woman named Diane, and the Diane had left him for a man who owned a truck stop in Ohio, and the leaving was the thing that had broken him, and the broken-ness was the thing that had made him stay in Hollow Bend, and the staying was the thing that had kept him alive.

He did not think about Diane. He thought about the coffee. He thought about the cream. He thought about the fact that Mara had not said no.

They pulled into the parking lot behind Mara's office. The office was a small building, and the building was old, and the old-ness was the thing that made it look like it had been there forever, and the forever was the thing that made it a landmark, and the landmark-ness was the thing that made people remember it, and the remembering was the thing that Mara hated.

She parked the car. She turned off the engine. She sat for a moment, and the sitting was the thing that she did when she needed to think, and the thinking was the thing that she did before she did anything else.

"Something's wrong," she said.

"What?" Ivy asked.

"Something's wrong," Mara said. "The door."

Sal looked at the door. The door was open. The door was not supposed to be open. Mara always locked the door when she left, and the locking was a habit, and the habit was the thing that made her careful, and the careful was the thing that had kept her safe.

She got out of the car. Ivy got out. Sal got out. They walked to the door, and the door was open, and the open-ness was the thing that made Mara's hand go to her hip, and the hip was the place where she kept her gun, and the gun was a thing she had never used, and the never-using was the thing that made her hope she never had to.

She pushed the door open. The door swung inward, and the swinging was a thing that should not have made a sound, and the sound was a creak, and the creak was the thing that made Sal's heart beat faster.

They went inside.

The office was small. There was a desk, and the desk was Mara's. There was a chair, and the chair was Mara's. There was a filing cabinet, and the cabinet was Mara's. There was a blotter on the desk, and the blotter was green, and the green was the thing that Mara had chosen, and the choosing was a thing she had done on purpose.

The blotter was gone. In its place was a playing card. The card was the Queen of Spades. The Queen was a woman, and the woman was looking to the left, and the looking was the thing that made her look like she was watching something that was not there.

There was a knife through the card. The knife was a kitchen knife. The knife was pinned to the desk. The knife was through the heart of the Queen.

Mara stood in the doorway. She did not move. She looked at the card, and the looking was the thing that made her face go pale, and the pale was the thing that Ivy saw, and the seeing was the thing that made Ivy step forward, and the forward was the thing that made Mara put out a hand, and the hand was the thing that stopped Ivy.

"Don't," Mara said. "Don't touch anything."

"I won't," Ivy said. "But Mara. Your face."

"My face is fine," Mara said. "My face is my face."

"Your face is white," Ivy said.

"My face is not white," Mara said. "My face is pale. There's a difference."

"What difference?"

"White is a color," Mara said. "Pale is a reaction."