9.
They checked Clara’s ID at a guard post, then waved her through. She drove up a long gravel drive toward the prison complex, a group of low brick buildings connected by brick walkways. There were fences everywhere, and rolls of barbed wire, and signs telling her not to get out of her car, not to use cameras or cell phones on the grounds, and whatever she did, to never, ever pick up hitchhikers. She pulled into a small parking lot directly underneath a looming brick wall between two watchtowers. Men with assault rifles looked down at her from the towers, waiting for her to try something.
Her stomach hurt. It was nerves, just nerves—nobody could really relax in a setting like this, and Clara had a lot to be nervous about anyway. She was going to tell Laura that it was over. She’d wrestled with the idea for a long time. She’d gone over and over in her head all the reasons why it had to be done. Why it was better to do it now than to wait. Why she had to say it in person. Her reasoning was sound. She didn’t need to feel guilty.
Their relationship had started at a bad time in Laura’s life.
Her previous girlfriend, Deanna, had been succumbing to a vampire’s curse. She had ended up taking her own life. Laura had clung then to Clara like a drowning woman holding on to a floating tree branch, and for a while it had been so good— she’d been so attentive, so affectionate. Clara had never had a relationship like that before.
But then the vampires hadn’t gone away. They kept coming back, and suddenly every time she reached out for Laura, Laura wasn’t there. She’d thought it was a temporary thing, maybe. That Laura would learn to balance her job and her love life. Instead the love life had been sacrificed for Laura’s obsessive quest to wipe out vampires once and for all. And even that had been okay—for a while. Because when your lover isn’t there, but it’s only because she’s out saving the world, well. You feel guilty if you start making demands. If you start drawing attention to your own needs. So Clara had done her best to support Laura, to always be there for her whenever she finally did come home.
Now she wasn’t coming home for years. It was too much to take. Clara was hardly of one mind about breaking up with Laura. But she knew she had to do it if she ever wanted to have any kind of life of her own. It was the smart thing to do. The mature, grown-up thing. To just make a clean break of it, so they could both get on with their lives.
And yet, she still felt like a sixteen-year-old about to take her first driver’s license test. Her stomach hurt, and she had a weird headache that wouldn’t go away. She hadn’t eaten anything all day because she hadn’t been hungry, and now, perversely enough, she felt ravenous. She could get something to eat when it was done.
Just do it, she told herself. Do it quickly, like pulling off a—
A big black dog shoved its wet nose against her window. Clara screamed a little. The dog wasn’t barking or snapping at her, but it had a suspicious look in its eye.
“Please step out of the car, ma’am,” a corrections officer in a blue stab-proof vest said. Clara nodded and opened her door. The dog lunged inside the car, sniffing at her skirt and her shoes. Clara held her hands up where they could be seen. She stepped out of the car and let the dog smell her, let it do its job.
“You here for a visitation?” the CO asked. “ID, please.”
Clara nodded and reached for her purse. The dog sat back on its haunches and stared at her, daring her to try something.