“With all my heart.”

“Did you hear about that flasher on the J?”

“It’s always something with the J, isn’t it?”

Just like that, we slipped back into our normal conversation. There had been a coyote sighting in Hamilton Heights—apparently it had scavenged a carton of General Tso’s chicken from a trash can. An abandoned Mickey Mouse suitcase had led to the evacuation of Times Square and snarled traffic all afternoon.

When we finished our food, he proposed a walk. The halal butcher. Immaculee Bakery. The fruit stand (KUMQUATS FRESH!). Winthrop Hardware. The bookstore. (The mother puts the children to bed. He waits for the bus. They say goodbye.) What a relief it was, passing these familiar places with Clive again. When we came to a bench, Clive gestured at it, and we sat. It was a frigid night. Our breath left white contrails in the air. Clive said he’d heard on 1010 WINS that the Gowanus Canal had frozen over.

“I guess now we know the freezing point of whatever the hell is in the Gowanus Canal,” I said.

He laughed. Then his face became serious. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you, Emily, and I don’t want to put it off anymore. If I put it off I’m afraid I’ll never say it.”

My chest tightened. “Yes?”

“It’s about what you said on Christmas Eve. About how we both have secrets. I think I’m ready. I want to tell you. I want us to tell each other.”

“I want that, too,” I whispered, half afraid that if I spoke too loudly I might shatter the moment. My eyes filled with tears. Bravo, Clairey. “I want that very much.”

“I trust you. I know you would never do anything to hurt me.”

“Never.”

“But I’m afraid,” he continued. It’s not easy for me, what I have to tell you. “Maybe you could begin? With what happened to you in—what was it called, again, the town you’re from?”

“Starlight.”

“Where you skated all the time on the Wabash River.”

I nodded.

“That’s a lie, Emily.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I looked at a map this week while I was gone. The Wabash River is all the way across the state from Starlight.”

I looked down at my lap. Snow had gathered there, and I brushed it off automatically. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’ve wanted to be honest with you for weeks now. For months, really. The truth is I’m from California. Pasadena. That’s where I grew up. You have to understand—when I talked with you that first night I had no idea you’d become part of my life the way you have.”

He didn’t reply.

“I said I’m sorry, and I am. But I told you I have secrets. So I tell people I’m from one place when I’m from another. Does it matter so much? Are you going to sit here and tell me everything you’ve shared with me is the whole truth?”

He shook his head.

“Please don’t be angry with me. We can still tell one another our secrets, just like you said. Forgive me?”

He held me in his gaze. “Who would I be forgiving? Emily, or Claire?”

SOMETIMES YOU close your eyes and you are back at the beginning. You are walking down the beach. The sand is warm beneath your feet. The water is aquamarine, a wonder, yet when you cup it in your hands it is clear, and this is the biggest mystery you know. Your hand is in her hand. You see the apricot freckles crowding her milky skin, her hair in its messy bun with the yellow elastic band, the billowy white tunic that hides her secret. She looks down at you and smiles. She is yours, a beautiful sister made only to receive and return your love.

Somehow you understand that if only you can hold this moment firmly enough in your mind, if only you can plunge deeply enough into it, the two of you can break off from the world. You can erase the future through an act of will and live together with your sister in this moment forever, see the blue sea stretching before you forever, walk forever down the warm sand, the black rocks up ahead receding at the pace of your approach so that you never reach them. You can remain here until the world forgets you.

But you can never quite manage it, can you? In the end, you always let the world back in. You could have everything you ever wanted, but you spoil it. You spoil it every time.

“HOW DID YOU KNOW?”

Snow continued to fall. Steam rose from a grate in the street. I kept my eyes fixed on the interface where the steam and snow melted into one another to keep me from slipping off the edge of the moment.

“The thing you did.” He traced a finger through the air. “You used to do it then, too.”

“I could never help it,” I said softly. I pressed a fingertip to a snowflake on my coat and felt it melt away to nothing.

“There was a night a few months ago. I was walking home and I thought I heard—did you follow me? Did you call my name?” He bit his lip and squinted down at the sidewalk as if he could scarcely believe what he was asking me. Then he looked up at me, his eyes so full of foreclosed hope that for a moment all I wanted was to be able to tell him I hadn’t and have it be the truth.

I looked back down at the sidewalk. “Yes.”

He shook his head. “I thought I was losing my mind.” He was facing away from me, speaking to the sky, the snow, the brittle February night—and I understood that these words were not meant for me, but for someone else.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something. You’re so good at thinking up things to say. All these nights. I hope you did have a fun time.”

“No.”

“Bullshit,” he whispered.

“You think I wanted to do this? I’ve given up everything. All I ever wanted was the truth. For Alison.”

“For Alison,” he echoed back. It seemed to me that his mind was far away, only the most gossamer of threads tethering him to this bench on this sidewalk here with me. He looked around—at the shop fronts across the street, the snow on the sidewalk, the black sky overhead. “Fuck,” he shouted, punching his fist into his open palm. His shout echoed down the deserted street.

“I’ll go,” I said. I stood. “I’m going.”

He grabbed my arm. “Sit.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Sit.”

“Please let me go. Please don’t—”

“Don’t what?”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted—”

“The truth, Clairey?”

I nodded.

“The truth is you’re a fucked-up girl.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“Just like your sister.”

“Please don’t do this.”

“The truth is Alison destroyed my life, and from what I see, she destroyed yours, too.”

“Please just let me go.”

“No. You want the truth, Claire, and I’m going to give it to you. You’re going to sit here and listen to every word of it. And then I never want to see you again.”

THE GIRL

EVERY WEEK THERE’S A GIRL. Every week she’s pretty. Some weeks she’s tall, some weeks she’s short, some weeks her hair is blond and silky, other weeks it’s red curls. She has big tits or flea bites, it makes no difference to he. He does like them with freckles.

He picks this one straightaway. I see it happen. She gallivants down the sand to the volleyball game and when she arrives she takes off she shirt. I was some distance away, but I saw it. He went still. I followed his eyes to she belly, where she has a big pink scar. Edwin and me have been breds since second grade. I know his mind and how it turns. He likes them with some twist to their pretty. He picks her then. I know even before he.

On the sideline, the girl’s pale little sister spectates. She does something funny with she finger, waving it through the air. She’s burning, but it’s not my place to say so.

AFTER WORK, me and Edwin smoke in the car park. We count up we tips on the hood of Edwin’s car. Me, twenty dollars. Edwin, thirty-four.

“Figure,” I say.

“What I tell you? You’re too serious. Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. Yankees want to be your friend.”

He’s right, but so? When I try to make chat, the guests’ faces go crooked. When Edwin tells a wife she looks lovely, her husband smiles because he loves to hear how his wife is pretty. When I say the same thing, the husband thinks it’s none of my business how pretty his wife be. I can’t do the job the way he does it. But I’m polite. I’m prompt. Some days, anyway.

After, I bike to Sara’s house to see my boy. When I arrive, Sara’s standing in the doorway with Bryan in she arms and displeasure on she face. Agatha is on the sofa in the parlor, scratching at she scalp.

“You’re late,” Sara says. I feel annoyed, though she’s right—I am late.

She tries to hand Bryan to me, but my boy clings to his mum. When I take him he cries. I stroke he ringlets. My boy is handsome, and I’m not just saying so because he’s mine. His ringlets have light in them. “There, there, my Bry,” I say.

THE NEXT morning I wake up to pounding on my bedroom door as usual. Gran.

“What’s wrong with you? You late!”