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10:47 A.M.
“Yes,” Clara answered before her sister could even ask the question.
“I thought you were supposed to be the easy-to-read one,” Naomi grumbled.
Clara laughed at the look on her sister’s face. “Don’t worry, you're not easy to read, Nay, just predictable. You're always worried about everyone else.” Clara barely managed to keep from adding,everyone except yourself. Instead, she said, “But I'm sure that I want to do this. Positive, in fact.”
“Okay,” Naomi sighed. “Well I still think you should leave it to Jonathon and his partner, but since you seem determined not to, I’ll help you see this through. But I want it noted that I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Noted,” she nodded, but not taking her sister all that seriously; Naomi tended to be a bit pessimistic. “Turn left at the next street. Tommy’s mother’s house is about halfway down on our right.”
“I didn’t realize Tommy grew up so close to where you lived as a kid,” Naomi commented as she turned the corner.
“Just a few streets over,” Clara agreed.
“Did you know him before?”
“No. We’d never met.”
“Had you seen him at the park or anything?”
“I don’t know. You know how kids are, they don’t pay attention to anyone or anything around them.”
“I suppose,” Naomi replied.
Clara wondered whether her sister had ever truly been a child. She suspected that Naomi had been one of those children who was an adult in a tiny little body. “That house there,” she pointed to a pretty two-story weatherboard painted white with blue shutters and trim around the windows and front door. The garden was simple but neat and tidy, mostly grass with the odd tree. When she’d first started coming here twenty years ago, the garden had been a mass of color, but Mrs. Karl suffered from arthritis and these days couldn’t manage the upkeep, so she’d taken out the bushes and shrubs and replaced them with grass.
“How long since you’ve seen Tommy’s mother?” Naomi asked as they walked down the path to the front door.
“Too long,” she admitted. “Maybe a year.”
“You're nervous,” Naomi observed.
“She just lost her son.”
“Which isnotyour fault,” Naomi said sternly.
“Maybe, or maybe not.” Clara still felt there might have been something she could have done to prevent Tommy’s death. “But either way, I feel responsible. I don’t know what to say to her.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
Naomi pressed the doorbell, and they waited in silence for the door to open. Barely thirty seconds later, it inched open. Mrs. Karl peered nervously out at them, but then threw the door open wider and all but crushed Clara in a fierce hug.
“Oh, dear, I'm so sorry. I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Karl sobbed.
Clara also began to cry and tightly squeezed the old woman. She loved Tommy’s mother, who had often been more of a mother to her than her own. “I’m sorry,” she wept into the woman’s shoulder.
At her apology Mrs. Karl abruptly pulled back, her gray eyes snapping fire. “Don’t you apologize to me, dear. You did nothing wrong. Do you hear me?”
She nodded meekly.
“Did my son really do that to you?” Mrs. Karl brushed a hand gently over the bandage on Clara’s neck.
Giving another nod, she felt very much like a vulnerable little girl again in the presence of a woman she held in such high esteem.
“I’m so sorry, dear,” she murmured. “I don’t know what would possess him to hurt you. He was a little in love with you, you know.”
