She said nothing to that and walked into the kitchen.
Larkin moved to the mantelpiece under the window, considered the carefully arranged religious talismans, before crouching to read the spines of books on the shelf below, only to realize they were actually all photo albums. Larkin gently tugged one free, its plastic-covered pages peeling apart like the loud crack of chewing gum. Big glasses and bigger hair overlain with distinct yellowing and discoloration marked their origins as the ’70s and ’80s. Lots of big family gatherings. Lots of smiling faces. So many photos of Marco.
“I wanted to be a photographer.”
Larkin abruptly stood and turned, still holding the album.
Camila studied his face a moment before setting a tray on the coffee table. She poured black coffee into a tiny teacup. “See the world, you know? I got pregnant instead. I was nineteen. I didn’t know how to say ‘I don’t want this life,’” she continued, pointing at the wedding photo on the wall without looking at it. “Moved from California becausehisfamily lived here.” Camila studied Larkin a second time. “I don’t speak ill of the dead, Detective, because I believe in Jesus. But I think even the Blessed Mother breathed a sigh of relief when Oscar choked to death on a bucket of KFC, December 12, 1985.”
Larkin returned the album to the shelf without a word, moved around the table, and took a seat on the couch.
Camila poured milk into Larkin’s coffee until the ratio was in favor of dairy, then made herself a cup and sat in the recliner. “We’d tried for more children, but Marco was my miracle. He was six when his papá passed. I could have gone home. My whole family still lived in California. But we’d managed to carve out a life here and… I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to prove something.”
Larkin took a polite sip of the milky coffee. His fingers were too big to properly hold the cup by its handle.
Camila studied her own drink. She spoke without glancing up. “I took so many pictures because I wanted to be a photographer…. I never thought they’d one day become my only connection to Marco.” She raised her head. “It’s getting more difficult to remember his voice. Sometimes, I wake in the middle of the night, sweating and crying. I come in here, in the dark, and go through the albums by the glow of city lights, and it’s almost like I can hear an echo of that exact moment when the shutter clicked. And then Marco is still alive.”
“Echoic memory,” Larkin said.
“What’s that?”
“Sensory memory,” he answered. “Specifically, how we remember what we hear. It’s very brief. Only a few seconds. Afterward, it moves into our short-term memory, where our brain can interpret sounds, such as syllables, into words and meanings and we can converse. It takes a considerable amount of impactful associations for that sort of memory to become housed in the long-term. Which is why their voice fades away and maybe you can only recall it when focusing on a specific moment, like studying a photograph. A majority of people experience sensory memory loss of a loved one. It’s not you—it’s biology.”
Camila leaned forward, set her cup on the coffee table, and stared at her hands, which she clasped in her lap. “It doesn’t seem fair.”
“I know.”
“A mother shouldn’t be able to forget her child’s voice.” She raised her head. Her expression was tired. Grief had aged her in a way that time could never. “You told me, when I called that first time, you knew loss. What was their name again?”
Larkin set down his own cup, swallowed roughly, said, “Patrick.”
“That’s right….” Camila nodded slowly. “Have you forgotten Patrick’s voice?”
—“No, no, no, please!Don’t—!” His ear-piercing scream abruptly silenced, like Patrick had been swallowed by a vacuum.
Thunderboomed overhead.
Heavy-soled shoessquished in the thick mud.
And then Everett Larkin heard his own skullcrack.—
Larkin rocked back in his seat, the memory so violent, it was like he’d been struck in the head all over again. The stunned reaction quickly gave way to panic, animalistic fear, the instinctive necessity to protect his face, his head, because Larkin couldn’t—he just couldn’t—survive the pain of a crushed skull a second time. His eyes stung and he was barely able to speak around the sickening rush of unwanted adrenaline. “May I use your bathroom?”
Camila saw the memories play out. There was no way she could have missed them. She pointed down the hall and said, “First door on the right.”
Larkin stood, took long, quick strides out of the room, pushed the door open, and closed it too loudly behind him. His vision was black around the edges, like he wasn’t getting any air. He knocked something from the counter as he hastily turned on the cold water, cupped it in his hands, and splashed his face. A second time. Third. Then he drank a mouthful and spit it out, because he could taste blood and mud on the back of his throat.
Larkin blindly turned the faucet off before hunching over even farther, forearms resting on the sink as his knees shook like Jell-O in an earthquake. His hot exhales bounced off the shallow bowl of the sink and hit him in the face. He couldn’t excuse himself to go retrieve the Xanax from the Audi. Not only was Larkin certain he wouldn’t make the short walk, but he’d already disrupted the moment between them too much. He needed positive associations in order to collect himself. His Rolodex spun haphazardly, and it felt as if the mental cards were spilling every which way.
Anotherdeeperbreath.
May 20, 2007, Larkin had finished college with a double major in psychology and criminology. It wasn’t without a healthy dose of irony that Dr. Katz of Larkin’s Advanced Cognitive Neuroscience Theories course couldn’t understand his perfect score and so had concluded that Larkin must have been cheating. Larkin had successfully disputed the claim before the chair of the department and graduated summa cum laude.
May 20, 2011, he had been driving in the late hours—something about New York at night settled Larkin’s restless mind—and had come upon a woman contemplating suicide from the Manhattan Bridge. He’d pulled over, asked if he could call for help, then talked with her for an hour while EMTs waited at a distance that wouldn’t provoke her. The conversation wasn’t a pleasant recollection by any means, but when she’d stepped away from the edge and taken Larkin’s hand, it had reinforced his desire to be a cop, when only hours earlier, he had been questioning whether to turn his badge in.
May 20, 2013, Larkin went on his second date with Noah. It had been a Monday night, and the Peruvian restaurant hadn’t been busy. They’d sat in a quiet corner for hours, drinking several rounds of Pilsen Callao, talking about their respective childhoods and careers and lamenting the challenges of dating seriously in a city hellbent on only hookups, and no matter what Larkin felt for Noah now, that night had been one of the best he’d had in a long, long time.
Larkin raised his head, grabbed a few tissues from the dispenser on the back of the toilet, and dabbed his face dry. He stared at his reflection. He was still a bit flushed, his eyes red-rimmed, but he’d managed to collect his wobbling pieces and adjust how they precariously balanced before he’d fallen apart. He threw the sodden tissues into the garbage, opened the door, and returned to the front room.
