Page 61 of Dark Ugly Places

“Yes?”

“Don’t be late.”

I hang up the phone and throw it back onto the sofa. Scotch glares at me and stands up. I offer my hand and let him sniff, but he yaps at me and growls. I never did like dogs much.

Upstairs, I dive into Nicola’s closet and find that it houses two kinds of clothes: pre-accident and post-accident. The pre-accident clothes are two sizes larger, all brand names, and hung up in a specific way, all the way in the back of her closet.

The post-accident clothes are another story. Jumbles of tiny items, cheap workout gear, hotel uniform shirts, and black tee shirts galore. I’m trying things on when I hear the front door close and Emmy humming to herself, opening and closing the fridge. I listen quietly as she makes her way up to her bedroom and switches on YouTube. I feel Nicola itching to get out, but I’ve barely been here long enough to take a shower, eat, and figure out what the next twelve hours are going to look like. In moments, I hear her shuffling down the hall toward me.

“Mom?”

Instinctively, my throat tightens. “In here!”

She pauses at the bedroom door. “What are you doing?”

My eyes take her in. Old sweats, her hair a little unruly, the same eyeliner back under her eyes, thick and misplaced. “Getting ready for an interview. Why?”

“I think the stuff we ordered online came. There are a ton of boxes outside.”

“Well, bring them in!”

Emmy leaves and returns with a few packages and an oversized box. She drops them in the middle of the bedroom floor and starts opening everything.

“I’m so excited,” she says. “I hope everything fits.”

I pull off a pair of oversized slacks and hang them back up. “Tell me about it.”

Emmy eyeballs me as she starts unwrapping items. “What’s this job interview, anyway?”

“It’s with someone very important.” From the closet, I take out a black cardigan and a skirt that look two sizes too big. “I wonder if I can belt this …”

“Probably,” Emmy answers me. “So, who is this very important person?”

“Don’t worry about who it is.”

Emmy sighs. “That’s a little shady, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t think.”

“Well, can I know what you’re going to interview for?”

“I told you. I’m helping someone as a personal assistant.”

“Sounds like a step down from the Whitmore.”

Cool and calm, I turn to her. “Yeah, well, when you have as much debt as we do, you take what you can get, toots.”

Emmy stares at me for a moment, her brow furrowed. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what? I’m not doing anything.”

Emmy steps slightly toward the door, holding the one dress she has yet to try on. “Yeah … Okay then.” She pauses for a moment, then drops the dress. “I’ll be in my room.”

“Suit yourself,” I call after her.

Scouring the closet for something decent to wear, I notice an upper rack still full of Ben’s clothes. Suits in various dark shades, a tie rack, overcoats, and next to them, jeans and shirts untouched, like he still lives here. Moving closer, I smell him in the fabric, a subtle waft of musk and pine. Maybe that’s why Nicola keeps them. The “don’t talk about Ben” rule is becoming stifling. I liked Ben. Everyone did. Under a canopy of red and white flowers, they’d married by the sea on the lawn of an expensive hotel, white chairs spread across the green, the sun setting, Nicola in her white fitted dress. And then it was the honeymoon right there in the same hotel by the sea, making love many times over while I watched and waited.

All that watching makes you remember things. The way money came and went but never stuck around. The nights of listening to them argue, hearing the same story over and over again. And slowly, I felt the burden on Nicola growing as the sole provider.