*
He left for the bank early the next day, eager to get away from Laura. The morning was cool, a hint of fall. He looked at where the black car had been and saw a candle and flowers. A tall glass jar with the Virgin of Guadalupe in bright colors on a sticker and a white candle burning inside. Red carnations lay beside it. He knelt and sniffed the candle. The odor was of chemicals. He had expected vanilla or citrus. Behind it was a piece of lined notebook paper, the edges ruffled from where it had been torn from a coiled wire binding. It read in Spanish, We love you and miss you. We will see you in a better place. He folded it and placed it behind the candle, just as it had been. The chickens clucked behind him. Without fail, every time they saw him they groused and scratched, expecting feed.
The sunlight cast crossways through the trees, hitting him dead in the eyes. The light was intensely yellow, not like the transparent light of midday, but a color that washed everything in a golden haze. The chickens slipped in and out of the shadows, clucking and bobbing their heads. Three Rhode Island Reds and three Plymouth Rocks. When the Plymouth hens stepped into the sunlight, their feathers, checkered bands of black and white, shimmered like silver. The Reds flashed like brass.
“Beautiful morning.” The gravel voice was unmistakably Liz, but he jumped anyway. She wore lime-green Crocs and a nurse’s shirt covered in red and green jalape?os. Her gray-striped hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
“Hey, Liz. How was the hospital?”
“Bloody as always, but we all survived.” She noticed the flowers and the candle. “What’s this?”
“Someone left it overnight. For the dead man.”
She picked up the note and read it, then folded it up and put it back in its place as he had. “Terrible for the family. We see these kids—mostly kids, sometimes adults—coming in with gunshot wounds or knife wounds. Gang fights. Bad drug deals. Fighting everyone. How are you two holding up?”
Cal flexed his hand around the shoulder strap of his briefcase. “Doing okay. Laura’s pretty freaked. It’s made things a little rough.”
She nodded and watched the flame in the votive. “Don’t let it eat away at you. You’re young. Talk to each other. It’s all about communication.”
“I guess we both want to make sense of it.” He looked at Liz as if she knew the answer.
She considered him for a second. “What’s to understand? No schooling, no jobs, no opportunities equals violence.” She spoke to him like a teacher. “These kids are so young when they get caught up in the gangs, they don’t realize they have options. Maybe they don’t. The cycle feeds itself. And the rest of us just stand around and watch. Pretend like it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
She laughed, showing her teeth, which seemed jagged and carnivorous. Wrinkles folded around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. The breeze moved the gray hair that was loose from her ponytail. The pink sunlight lit it like a red halo. He didn’t like her comment about people standing around and watching. He wasn’t one of those people. She was. Like a witch, glorying in the blood and death.
“Yeah,” he said. “Crazy place.”
Liz nodded. “You know you can make a left turn from the right lane in Rhode Island?”
He told her to have a good one and headed to work in a black mood.
*
He did not want to do it, but Liz’s words echoed in his head. He had a choice: ask Laura what was going on, or wait for her to do it. The anxiety made him sick. If not for the constant worry, he would probably not do anything. But he had to end the agony. They would discuss this. Anger kept bubbling up in his throat with accusations of what she had done to him. He was preemptively attacking her, he knew. He wanted to be ready if she blamed him for something.
They sat on the couch facing each other. Her hands were flat on her knees. She did not seem surprised by his request to talk.
“I know this dead man has shaken you up. It’s upset me a lot too,” he began.
She looked puzzled.
“Look,” he continued, “I wasn’t a huge fan of moving to this neighborhood, but we’re here now. Let’s make the best of it. When the lease ends, we’ll move. Wherever you want. The East Side, maybe. Or Barrington.”
Her hands curled into little balls against her jeans. She looked at them. “That sounds great,” she said.