“He’s not, Lydia. I saw him when? Three weeks ago? Less than three weeks. What is today?”
Lydia could see her struggling with her own denial, but the certainty of her words had broken through. Mrs. Patel’s mittened hand clutched at a phantom spot on her chest.
“Joey’s heart was already broken,” Lydia said, “and you broke it again. He couldn’t recover this time.”
“I will make it up to him.”
“It’s too late.”
Lydia opened the door to the alley. She heard voices out there and in a moment of terror expected to see Mr. Patel—but it was only a homeless couple, pushing a shopping cart through the slush. Just beyond them, across the alley, was the rusty old ladder bolted to the side of the motel. It hurt to remember Raj in his buckled jumpsuit, climbing rung by rung to its top and pouring a curtain of powdery creamer as little Carol held out her pack of matches below.
Lydia was glad that it wasn’t Mr. Patel she’d heard in the alley. He’d killed Mr. and Mrs. O’Toole, and he’d killed her friend Carol, and he’d killed the broken Joey—or at least caused him to die—and it only took one look at Mrs. Patel to see all the damage he’d done to her as well. Before she could face him, or call Moberg or the police, she promised herself she’d first speak with Raj, empty herself of all these secrets, and maybe even figure out a way to shield her father from the secrets he’d kept as well.
“I will make it up to him,” Mrs. Patel said.
“Joey deserved a better mother than you,” Lydia said, buttoning her coat and stepping out the door.
“I will make it up to him,” Mrs. Patel repeated, but Lydia was already trudging through the alley slush, glancing at the ladder, thinking about the fiery flower—warm and alive—that her friend Carol had conjured from the air.
EPILOGUE
On the night before Thanksgiving, Lydia’s ghost appeared on television.
At the time, she was in the kitchen, pulling down boxes of stuffing and cans of yams and periodically slapping the cold pimpled turkey thawing in her sink. From where she stood she could see Raj in the other room, wearing a gray wool sweater and cut-off army pants. He thumbed the TV remote.
“Maybe nothing good is on,” she said.
“Something good is always on.”
Raj had offered to come over and help get the meal ready, but since he didn’t have cable yet in his new apartment he’d gone straight for her remote. To save a little money, Lydia had planned on getting rid of cable when David moved out six months ago, but Raj had been coming around often enough that she’d postponed making the call. He would watch just about anything, the cheesier the better, but she usually didn’t mind. For all the perks of living alone, one downside was how long the nights could sometimes feel with no one there to grasp.
Her dad would be coming over for the holiday tomorrow as well, his first trip to Denver in two decades. Lydia hadn’t seen him in person since last winter’s visit to Rio Vista, but he’d been calling every Sunday like clockwork and she was usually glad to hear his voice. Most of the time they kept their conversations away from anything too substantial, but at one point during the summer, after a few beers at a Bright Ideas barbecue, she’d bravely suggested that he turn his cabin into a used-book store, since he had plenty of inventory already and Rio Vista could sure use a—
He hung up the phone before she even finished. Their calls continued, but neither of them ever mentioned the used-book store idea again. By way of an apology, she mailed him an assortment of reading glasses.
Lydia had hoped to invite David over for Thanksgiving dinner as well, but he wouldn’t even return her calls, and she really couldn’t blame him. The original plan last spring—hers, anyway—had been for them to try living apart for a while, just as a test, to see what would happen if they had some distance between them. After discovering that he’d known for years, in silence, about Little Lydia, she’d been spotting his faults all over and losing her ability to overlook them. If the two of them were meant to be, she reasoned, they’d be drawn to each other again like a pair of cranes or vultures, ready to mate for life. David begrudgingly agreed, and she helped him get set up in a studio apartment near the University of Denver, a bit closer to his office.
Those first weeks of separate living had invigorated them as a couple, as if the arrangement had merely given them a new place to have sex and a new neighborhood to grab coffee. But something happened once the first month wore off. David gradually stopped inviting her over to his studio, claiming perhaps rightly that spending all of that time together felt too much like cheating on their agreement, and within another month he’d come right out and accused her of trying to have it both ways. He had plenty to offer, he said, and if she didn’t want all of him, she couldn’t have any of him. It hurt how right he was. By the time Halloween rolled around, he’d gone totally cold.
David would not be spending Thanksgiving with Lydia and her father, but she was comforted by the fact that Raj would be there. And Raj was comforted, too. For the first time in his life, he had nowhere else to go.
Ten months ago, the day after leaving Mrs. Patel at Gas ’n Donuts, Lydia had been organizing a pile of board books in the Kids section when Plath approached, wearing flip-flops and a skirt she’d made from a shower curtain. She held out the morning paper and bit her lip.
—If it’s another picture of me, Lydia said, gesturing to the newspaper, I don’t even want to know.
—You look tired, Plath said. I’ll come back.
—What is it?
—It’s bad. Really bad. Murder-at-the-doughnut-shop bad.
Lydia was supposed to meet Raj for breakfast this morning, but he hadn’t answered her calls. She assumed he’d spent all night poring over Irene’s files and needed to catch up on his sleep, but now her heart began to pound.
—What happened? she said. What murder?
—Late last night at Gas ’n Donuts. That’s your friend’s place, right?
Lydia felt herself falling into a panic—thinking first about Raj, then about Mrs. Patel, then she was unable to think at all. She grabbed the paper out of Plath’s hands.
—Who got killed? Who—?
—The guy who owned the shop, Plath said. Your friend’s dad. He’s dead.
Lydia’s hands were so shaky that Plath had to spread open the pages for her to read: Local Business Owner Slain in Late-Night Robbery.
—You okay? Plath asked.