Page 20 of The Other Mother

ADAM

W e do not go inside. We never do. The envelope is warm from my hand by the time he takes it.

“Last time,” I say.

He does not answer. He never promises anything I can hold him to.

The bar sign buzzes in red. Two bulbs out. The lot smells like fryer oil and old beer. A swamp cooler rattles on the roof. People laugh on the other side of the wall where everything is bright and loud and ordinary.

Here, it is not.

He stands where the security light died a long time ago.

Same jacket as last time. Same mechanic’s hands.

He looks past me first, then over my shoulder, then across the street where the tire shop sleeps behind its chain link fence.

His eyes only come back to me when the cars on Highway 111 fade to a distant hiss.

He peels the flap. Counts without counting. A thumb, a pause, another thumb. Enough to say he saw it. Not enough to make me feel better.

“You came alone,” he says.

“I always do.”

He nods like that is the right answer. “She is calling again.”

My mouth is dry. “Then stop picking up.”

“She is not the only one,” he says. “There are flags when people start looking in the same places. Systems talk to each other. You know this.”

The words hang there. I close my hand around the spare key in my pocket until it digs into my skin. Pain helps me stand still.

“Any messages for me?” I ask.

He reaches into his jacket and pulls a folded sheet. No letterhead. No name. Just the kind of typing that comes from a printer that is running out of toner. He holds it so I can see a line near the bottom. A date. A time. A case number that is one digit off from the one I know by heart.

“If you want it clean, you need alignment,” he says.

I take the paper. I fold it again. Smaller. It disappears into my palm.

“She does not need to see any more of this,” I say.

He looks at me like I am a man he has met a hundred times. “They never do.”

A truck rolls through the lot and slows when the driver realizes this is not a space for him. We both turn our faces away without thinking. The truck moves on. The tires crunch the same way my stomach does.

“Last time,” I say again. I hear how thin it sounds and hate it.

“You should tell her to rest,” he says. He says it like a doctor who is tired of saying it. “Tell her to stop logging in. Tell her to let you handle it.”

“She does not listen to me,” I say.

“Then give her something else to hold.”

He slides the empty envelope back to me like this is a normal transaction. I do not take it. He tucks it into his own pocket instead. His hands are steady. Mine are not.

“Calls will slow this week,” he says. “After that, I cannot say.”

“I do not want calls,” I say. “I want quiet.”

He looks past me again. “Quiet costs more.”

I think about the nursery camera at home.

The way the red light stares at the crib like an eye that never blinks.

I think about Claire humming the wrong words to the right melody.

I think about the name I told everyone to stop saying and how it still finds its way into texts from numbers I do not recognize.

“I am done,” I say.

He gives me the kind of smile that does not reach anything. “Everyone is. Until they are not.”

A door opens on the far side of the bar. A man stumbles out, laughs, lights a cigarette, and vanishes around the corner to take a piss in the gravel. The moment breaks and reforms .

“Next time we meet at the mall,” the man says. “During the day.”

“There is no next time.”

He shrugs. “Use the number you have. Or do not.”

He walks away without looking back. The taillights of his Civic lift him out of the lot and onto the road. They turn into the same river of red that carries everyone else home.

I stand there with the paper in my fist until the edges leave marks. I put it in my wallet behind the insurance cards. I tell myself I will burn it in the grill when I get home and that I will forget the way his thumb moved over the cash.

On the drive back I check the rearview more than I need to. The desert wind pushes at the car in lazy fits. A shopping bag tumbles down the sidewalk. The house will be dark when I pull in, and calm.

“Last time,” I say to the empty car.

It sounds better when the engine is loud.