For Clay, it was slightly more personal.
He knew of another broken nose, too.
* * *
—
Back then—way back then, a few days after she moved in—Clay was out front on the porch, eating toast, a dinner plate up on the rail. It was just as he finished when Carey crossed Archer Street, in a flannelette shirt and well-worn jeans; the shirt rolled up at the elbows. The last piece of sun beside her:
The glow of her forearms.
The angle of her face.
Even her teeth, they weren’t quite white, they weren’t quite straight, but they had something nonetheless, a quality; like sea glass, eroded smooth, from grinding them in her sleep.
At first she wondered if he’d even seen her, but then he walked, timidly, down the steps, the plate still in his hands.
From that close-but-careful range, she surveyed him; interested, happily curious.
The first word he ever said to her was “Sorry.”
He spoke it downwards, into the plate.
* * *
—
After a comfortable, customary silence, Carey spoke again. Her chin touched his collarbone, and this time she’d make him face it.
“So,” she said, “he came….”
Their voices were never whispered there—just quiet, like friends, unthreatened—and now she confessed, “It was Matthew who told me.”
Clay felt it in his graze.
“You saw Matthew?”
She nodded, just slightly, against his neck, and went on to reassure him. “I was coming in Thursday night when he was taking out the garbage. It’s hard to avoid you Dunbar boys, you know.”
And Clay could have almost broken then:
The name Dunbar, and soon to be gone.
“It must have been pretty rough,” she said, “seeing—” She adjusted. “Seeing him.”
“There are rougher things.”
Yes, there were, and they both knew it.
“Matthew said something about a bridge?”
She was right, I had. It was one of the more unsettling traits of Carey Novac; you seemed to tell her more than you should.
Silence again. One twirling moth.
Closer now when she spoke, he could feel the actual words, as if put there, on his throat. “Are you leaving to build a bridge, Clay?”
That moth wouldn’t go away.