* * *
—
It was July by then, and she had a day off, a Sunday.
They caught the train and bus.
There was a field and a bike track footpath.
The house was in a corner, the right-hand side of a cul-de-sac.
At the door, he knew them right away.
They stared at him next to the brickwork.
He had dark hair, a black T-shirt, and an archway masquerading as a mustache.
“Wow!” said Carey Novac; she’d spoken before she’d realized. “Look at the size of that handlebar!”
Patrick Hanley wasn’t swayed.
When Clay found the courage to talk to him, his questions were met with a question:
“What the hell would you want with my sister?”
But then he’d had a good look at him; and he looked a lot like him—Clay could see the moment it changed. Was Patrick remembering Michael, not only as a man Abbey married, but as the boy she’d walked the town with?
Regardless, things became friendlier, and introductions were made.
“This is Carey,” Clay said, “and I’m Clay—” and Patrick Hanley now stepped closer.
“Clay Dunbar,” he said quite casually; but he’d split them right down the middle. He’d said it, he didn’t ask.
* * *
—
She lived in a gorgeous apartment block:
She was several bright windows in a concrete Goliath—the capitalist type—and they went there a few weeks later (Carey’s next day free), on an August afternoon. They stood in its frightening shade.
“It goes all the way up to heaven,” said Carey, and as usual, her hair was out. Her blood-spot freckles were jittery. “You ready?”
“No.”
“Come on, look at you!”
She slid a hand through so they linked arms, and they could have been Michael and Abbey.
Yet still, he didn’t move.
“Look at what?”
“You!”
As always she wore her jeans, and worn-out ones at that. Her flannel shirt was faded. A black jacket was loosely open.
She hugged him by the buzzers.