The Middle of Somewhere(66)

Everything she did during the run-up to the funeral—sitting on the floor, refusing food, allowing others to make decisions—was interpreted as grief. It was indeed grief, but mixed in equal parts with guilt and shame. She learned in those few days that either the signs are the same for all three, or the grief of others blinded them. The sympathy flowing over her was a salty sea biting into the wounds she had made in her own flesh.

On the hour-long journey to Santa Fe, she rode in the backseat with Gabriel’s youngest sister. Her mother’s ancient Land Rover wasn’t in the drive when the Pembertons dropped her off. This concerned them, but she said she would be fine. They watched from the car while she approached the wooden burro by the front door, removed a spare key from under the kachina doll sitting on the burrow’s back, and let herself in.

The adobe house was the same as always: a colorful, cluttered hodgepodge of Southwestern and Mexican furnishings, mixed with her mother’s modernistic artwork. It was like walking into a peyote dream. The house was filled with elaborately painted animals in comic or menacing poses, vividly striped rugs and throws, ivory skulls with dried flowers in the eyes and mouths, giant pots fashioned from grasses and hides, and swirling canvases of orange, green and red—Claire’s signature colors. Liz went straight to her room.

She was relieved to find her mother had not repurposed it—not that she would have resented it—but today the simple, tidy room of her childhood was a haven once again. The dark wooden headboard and navy bedspread sharp against the stark white walls and wheat-colored sisal rug were as she had left them. She put down her bag, closed the door and crossed to the window seat. Here was where she had become herself, with the view of the garden and the privacy of her thoughts.

She had no idea how long she stayed at the window, her knees pulled up to her chest. The front door opened once, but no one came to her room. Claire, if nothing else, knew the value of solitude. Liz watched a hummingbird probe among the flowers, then alight on a thorny branch to dart its beak in and out of its wing like a needle through fabric. The sky at the horizon shifted from blue to lilac. She wondered if the hole for Gabriel had already been dug, and whether Daniel’s game of hide-and-seek would end when his brother was lowered into it. She closed her eyes and requisitioned Gabriel’s face from her memory, but it wouldn’t come.

A knock at the door startled her awake. A voice said her name. Valerie. She got up and found her friend in front of her. For a split second, she knew she would tell Valerie everything, right then and there. She had to. She would confess to her unhappy marriage, to adultery, to deviousness, to complicity in Gabriel’s death. She would expose the shame burning up through her grief and downward into her soul.

But she noticed changes in Valerie. Her red hair was shoulder-length, and layered—a more sophisticated look than her perennial longer style. And when she pulled Liz into her arms, she smelled of a citrusy perfume. They weren’t much, but the changes made Liz hesitate, and the impulse to confess passed like the shadow of a ghost. There would be other similar opportunities in the years to come, but if Liz was honest, this was the only real one. And it passed.

“Your mom brought tamales from Enrico’s,” Valerie said, her eyes brimming with tears. “Come to the kitchen and watch me eat them all.”

She told Liz she was cutting short her internship to take a job near San Francisco. She was heading there from Santa Fe to look at condos, and planned to put deposit money down.

“There are tons of device companies up there, you know,” she said. “I checked.”

“Tell me you didn’t change your plans for me.” Valerie looked at her shoes, and Liz was certain her friend had done exactly that.

“Of course not,” Valerie said. “How could I know whether you wanted to leave Albuquerque? I just thought, as long as I’m going to be there . . .”

Liz hadn’t thought about her plans at all, but the moment Valerie raised the idea, she knew she wanted to leave everything behind. “Thanks. Can I get back to you on that?”

She gave notice the Monday after the funeral. Her boss, Stacy Stratticon, was surprised to hear from her, having authorized time off when Liz had called the previous week; she wasn’t expecting to lose her promising young protégé. She sounded miffed, then shifted gears.

“Sometimes stability is what a person needs after a tragedy,” Stratticon said.

Nice try, Strap-it-on. Liz said she’d be in soon to collect her things and say good-bye.