The Clairvoyants(74)

“Let me know if you decide to go,” I said.

“I will,” he said. He unloaded his backpack and slid strips of negatives out of their sleeves for the enlarger, as if sensing I was ready to leave. “We should totally have coffee one afternoon this week.”

My face felt odd, as if I weren’t used to conversing, and my muscles were underused. “I’d like that,” I said.

*

DEL CONTINUED TO spend time with Alice and the other Milton girls. I would hear her come and go, or hear Alice’s laughter downstairs. Sometimes, Del would invite me to go bowling with them at Viking Lanes, or snowmobiling in the fields around Milton, but I refused. I wasn’t sure what she was telling them all about William, and I wouldn’t know how to act. It was disorienting to have the apartment to myself—a constant reminder of him. We would have broken up eventually—I knew that now. My only question remained his obsession over the images.

I kept my distance from Geoff, too. It was March when he finally knocked and I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t home. I opened the door to his familiar brown eyes, his crazed hair, Suzie thrusting her nose into my palm.

“Have you got some tea?” he said. “I’m parched.”

He tugged Suzie in on her leash and took a seat at the little table. I boiled water for a pot.

“So have you been licking your wounds?” he said, launching into his real reason for coming by.

I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“It’s obvious old William has flown the coop,” he said, and pulled out his tobacco. “There’s no shame in admitting defeat. He was always a fickle sort.”

I poured the hot water in so the tea could steep and set the teapot in the center of the table. The apartment was still filled with William’s things, and Geoff took this in.

“I guessed you’d notice soon enough,” I said.

He gave me a sympathetic look. “At least you’ve managed to come out of it unscathed,” he said. “Count yourself lucky you aren’t in the same predicament as your sister.”

I was confused by this bit of conversation, but I sensed I should go along with it. Geoff knew something I didn’t, and I wanted to know it, too.

“Well, I am grateful for that,” I said. The table sat by the window, and I could feel the cold panes. Below me was the sidewalk and the place beneath the elm where I’d seen Mary Rae that first night. Geoff poured out our tea, oblivious. “These are gorgeous cups,” he said, eyeing the Limoges.

I drank the tea, scalding my tongue, and waited.

“Have you banned him from your place?” he said. “It might be easier on you if you packed up his things.”

“I was planning to do that,” I said. “I’ve just been so busy with school.”

The truth was, though I’d continued to attend my classes, I was barely paying attention in them and had begun neglecting assignments.

Geoff eyed me over the rim of his cup. “You’re going to be busy helping raise a baby,” he said. “She’s lost the plot, if you ask me, expecting you to be part of the whole thing.”

I shrugged and set my cup in the saucer. My hand shook, and I buried it in my lap. I could hardly believe this story Del had told him.

“You’re a better person than I’d be,” he said. “Don’t think some of us haven’t put two and two together—I mean Will takes off, and Del is knocked up. Everyone is being so hush-hush.”

He sipped the last of his tea and laid a hand on Suzie’s head. I thought of the things we each could infer about the other through the plaster wall that separated our apartments—the pacing of the floorboards, the sounds of lovemaking. The odd pleasure it lent us to know things that the other might never confess. And then, how difficult it was to know the person we were closest with—how our bodies together never guaranteed anything.

Geoff said Anne was shocked by the turn in events. “But that’s often the way with unplanned things. A bit of a surprise that often ends up being lovely.”

I didn’t dare sip my tea and reveal my trembling hand. I simply nodded at him, and he saw my distress and changed the subject. “It’ll be spring eventually. Slow to arrive, you know. But it always does.”

Though it was March, there were no signs yet of the thaw that signaled spring’s arrival. Geoff didn’t usually have a problem dominating a conversation, and he did that while he drank his tea, switching topics, until he couldn’t resist returning to the highlight of the day.

“Where is the old scoundrel?” he said. “I haven’t seen him around.”

“You should ask Del,” I said.

“She told me to ask you,” Geoff said. He spun his cup in its saucer. “Sounds like neither of you has a clue.”

I gave him a feeble smile. “That would be Del’s problem now, wouldn’t it?”

Geoff stood to go, brushing the excess tobacco from his lap to the floor. In the doorway I told him to wait.

“I found a necklace in your car,” I said. “It was an amethyst pendant.”

Geoff didn’t seem too surprised. “I don’t drive many women around in my car. But if you girls gave someone a ride, maybe they lost it? You might ask Will, too. He’s borrowed the thing a few times in the past.”