The Air We Breathe by Christa Parrish

nor Claire had mentioned the Andrew Brenneman incident again, but both knew all was forgiven.
    With the side of her hand Claire tucked her skirt between her legs until it looked as though she wore pants. “You’ll say that until Meghan leaves with him, and then you’ll be lost.”
    “You got me,” Heidi said. “Are you okay? You look—”
    “Tired. Just tired. I didn’t sleep all that great last night.”
    “Any reason in particular?”
    “No,” Claire said, meaning yes . Meaning always . Meaning I can’t tell you because you’re happily running around with your grandson and I’m alone.
    After their years of friendship, Heidi knew not to believe her; she opened her mouth and in went the breath of question beginnings, but Landon came and, gripping his grandmother’s first two fingers, tugged her off the bench. “More,” he said, dragging Heidi to the bottom of the twisty slide to wait for him. She stood there, waiting for him, and when he came down she caught him, whispered something in his ear. He went running to the sandbox and waved for her to come. She did.
    Beside her, Claire sensed the slightest sense of motion and saw the young girl still looking at her, the swing quivering from the child’s weight suspended there. Her white-blond hair puffed out from a purple plastic headband, the kind Amelia had complained pinched behind her ears, and her skin seemed almost translucent, as if it hadn’t been seen by the sun in a long time.
    Claire didn’t think it odd she wasn’t in school, though the girl looked at least ten, maybe eleven, and strangely familiar—she had homeschooled her own children and often took them out midmorning but doubted that wasthe case here. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find the girl was battling some sort of long illness. She had a frailty about her, a glassiness. Perhaps she was too weak to pump the swing.
    “Can I push you?”
    The girl looked over her shoulder, to a woman who stood perhaps ten feet away, speaking to another woman, gesticulating, eyes wet, mascara smudged at the corners. Then the girl nodded. Claire stood but not wanting to put her hands on the girl from behind, she stood in front of her, took the chain in each hand, low, where it met the rubber seat, and gently pulled forward. The swing rocked back and forth, and the girl held out her legs, straight, so Claire could push the bottom of her feet. She used to swing Caden like that, listening to the same squeaky rhythm of the chain in the metal eyehooks, the same light thud against the palms of her hands. Suddenly the girl leaned back as far as she could go, eyes closed, hair dragging on the ground, and Claire didn’t touch her. After three passes, she sat up again, skidding her feet through the mulch to stop.
    “Your necklace,” the girl said, voice brittle. Uncertain.
    Claire touched the crystal cross she wore every day beneath her clothing, dropped it back into her shirt. It must have fallen loose when she bent over to start the swing. “My son gave it to me.”
    “I saw one like that before.”
    “In the store?”
    “On TV.” The late-morning light revealed fine, nearly transparent hairs on the girl’s legs; her face was expressionless. “It hurts you.”
    “What does? The cross?”
    “When you say about your son.”
    Claire squeezed the cross now, feeling it prick her palm. The nails. His nails. “How do you . . . ?” She stopped, and then in a moment of confusion and defeat, of transparency that seemed to descend on her, coming from outside her body, said, “Yes.”
    “My mom,” the girl said, cool blue irises flickering toward the woman with the smeared makeup, “looks at me like that, too.”
    “Hanna?” The woman crossed to the swing in heavy, defensive steps. “What’s going on? What did you say?”
    The girl lowered her head.
    “You said something. I heard you. I know I heard you.” When her daughter didn’t respond, she moved in toward Claire, desperate,