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As if we agreed to it beforehand, once we are outside, Dina and I do not speak, do not break the meditative spell of the night. It feels safer this way. Like we stand a better chance of blending into the dark if we disappear into its hush.

We take my bike, me pedaling standing up while Dina sits on the seat, legs splayed into a V. We retrace the route I once took to school. Off our street, left onto Summit. I stop to look at the ghost bicycle I now know is a memorial to me. Dina touches it lightly as we pass, with a casualness that suggests habit. The streetlight flickers.

I pedal up the hill with ease, even with the added weight of Dina. She directs me to the left. I pause. Our town is laid out like a four-leaf clover. One leaf is the older developments where Dina and I live, one leaf is the mostly commercial area where Dad’s office and the shopping mall are, one leaf is the newer developments, the fancier McMansions with spiral staircases and soaring foyers where Casey lives. The last leaf, the withering one, is the old industrial part of town, where the Whittaker Plant closed long ago. This part of town has several squat apartment blocks that once housed the factory workers, an area known as Whittaker Court but which everyone calls Witch’s Coven.

Our town is not exactly a high-crime area, but whenever you read about a shooting or a drug bust in the newspaper, it was usually in Whittaker. The only people I knew who went there said they went to score drugs, which apparently was very easy to do, at least according to Casey. “You just drive up like at McDonald’s,”

she’d bragged.

Though it was only a few miles from my house, I’d been to Whittaker only a few times, usually with our church, handing out Thanksgiving meals or warm coats. Even though it was broad daylight, even though I was surrounded by half our congregation, the place always felt shrouded in shadows.

Dina has me stop on an empty street. Wind blows trash and plastic bags across the way.

“There,”

Dina says, pointing to a window.

I follow her finger to a second-floor apartment. The window is bare, and a light is on, so Calvin is easily visible from the street. He’s sitting at the table, staring off into space, occasionally taking a drink of something or other.

“Do you want to go in?”

Dina asks me.

I do. I want to see Calvin. I want to fix things with him. That’s what I’m here to do. And I don’t. Because seven years have passed and that man in that window is not someone I’m sure I know. If time has held still for me, it appears to have hurtled forward for him. He doesn’t look twenty-five. He looks old.

“I can walk you to his front door but I can’t go in with you,”

Dina says.

I’m sure Detective Weston has probably warned Dina against this neighborhood. She’s probably breaking all kinds of rules even being here with me.

“Just give me a second to get my nerve up.”

I hear myself. Get my nerve up. To see Calvin. My forever love.

He’s standing up now, talking on a cell phone, and then he’s put a coat on and then he’s out of sight.

“Looks like he’s going out,”

I say, relieved because this means I can’t go in to see him.

“I think you’re right.”

Dina points to the barred glass front door of the building. It opens and Calvin skulks onto the street, as if trying to diminish his height. As he walks under a streetlight, something hard and metallic glints in his hand. Is it his phone? Or a gun? The Calvin I know would never carry a gun. The Calvin I know would never hurt me. The Calvin I know would never work in a bar or live in Whittaker.

I duck behind a parked car, thinking of the article about Dad’s crusade. My father who also loved me, who I also trusted, thought Calvin had hurt me.

“Does he have a gun?”

I whisper to Dina.

She shrugs, her face impassive. Maybe being the daughter of a cop, she’s spent her life around guns, though I remember when Detective Weston came home from work, before she even said hello, she would always put her firearm in a special safe.

“Let’s get out of here,”

I say to Dina.

“Are you sure?” she says.

I used to be. So sure of Calvin. Of me. Of our future. But I was so young. Whatever I am, I’m not that anymore.

“I’m not sure of anything,”

I tell her.