but at it—at the way it curves and the way itmeets the door frame. Most people cannot tell, but the glass on the cars their company issues is thicker than normal window glass: bulletproof. She looks back down at her BlackBerry, at her start of a message to Ian. She adds:
Meanwhile, I have some important news to share so
She backs up and tries again:
Also, I’ll call you during one of my breaks because there’s something I should
something I owe it to you to
something I feel obliged
She backs all the way up again and looks at what she has. Just a last-minute regret for the wedding, and an apology for the smaller disappointment she knows this will be.
She presses Send.
She sets her BlackBerry in the cup holder then, and with her remaining time, she makes some preparations. She eats a saltine and takes a sip of water. She lays an empty ziplock bag and a soft-pack of wet wipes on the passenger seat. She takes a small white trash bag from her backpack and sets it up, pinning the long top edge behind the glove-box door. She takes the folders she prepared the night before—“Insurance Claim Denial Appeals” and “Planned Parenthood Clinic Forms”—and moves them to a rear exterior pocket in her backpack to make room for the folders that her shift manager has given her in the front. In the cup holder her phone lights up suddenly. A reply from Ian. Above an excerpt from her own message, “I know this is really bad for you,” he has typed this:
We’ll see.
Dana breathes a little puff of surprise through her nose. She sits staring at it for so long that when she checks the clock again she sees that it is time to leave. She sets her BlackBerry back in the cup holder. She puts the key in the ignition and turns. She backs up in the armored Suburban, past her white car with the dress for the wedding still waiting in the backseat, and turns around, pulling forward finally, up to a closed garage door and stops just shy of it so that she is not blocking the threshold.
Jessica stands in the center of a big walk-in closet stuffed full of the things she wears and the things she wants to hide. On the shelves jeans and T-shirts sit stacked among clear plastic bins of sunglasses and baseball caps, and in the corners, on either side of a big mirror she avoids looking in this morning, skirts of evening gowns spill out from behind baskets heaped high with dirty laundry, a big gilt-framed collage Akhil made of her film reviews, and the life-sized cardboard cutout of her in a flight suit that her daughters would not let her throw away. The skylight is dark above her, and she is already dressed in her big sweatshirt and jeans. Her running sneakers are on and tied. She is bending to place an extra baseball cap into an open duffel bag when Akhil appears in the doorway in his T-shirt and striped pajama bottoms, his hair wild with sleep, rubbing his eyes.
“I let the dogs out to pee; they were scratching. Wait—what are you doing?”
“I’m going.” She slides open a drawer.
“I thought we talked about this last night. I thought you agreed with me.”
She sifts through her socks. “Please don’t try to talk me out of it.”
She puts a pair of socks in her duffel, and Akhil disappears and appears again quickly with a laptop and a serious, purposeful look on his face. He opens it on top of her dresser. He begins tapping.
She tries to keep packing as he reads. He is not the type to exaggerate his delivery, but his raised eyebrows and his pattern of emphasisbetray his disdain. “ ‘I’m so worried about you, Sweetheart. I care about you so deeply, and I know you well enough to know that you will never love yourself if you let yourself be lured by the spoils of fame into turning your back on your family. You are not the type to be ashamed of your humble beginnings. Perhaps one of the members of your entourage could redo the seating charts and find a little space in the back for me, behind all the stars?’ ”
Jessica’s
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