I call Clara for a quick check-in before Maisie and I leave. She answers on the second ring.
“Hey,” I say to her, and she replies, “Hey yourself,” though the words are hushed and hard to hear, a forced whisper, and I know right away that Felix is sleeping.
“How’s everything going?” I ask, picturing her and Felix at home, on the sofa, watching TV, Felix in her arms or on the floor, maybe, swaddled in a baby blanket.
“Just fine,” she says, and I hear that overwhelming fatigue in her voice, so tangible, like she could close her eyes right now and drift off to sleep.
“Is Felix asleep?”
“Yup,” Clara says, and I do the math in my head, easily suspecting that if Felix is asleep now, he’ll be up half the night, and therefore Clara will be, too.
“Maybe you should wake him,” I suggest, as twin ballerinas wave goodbye to Maisie and drift through the glass door. The room is loud and crowded, so many mothers trying hard to force shoes onto their ballerinas’ feet, nobody wanting to go.
“And how should I do that?” Clara asks.
Her words are snappy, and yet I know she doesn’t mean for them to be. I don’t take it personally. Clara is tired. In the last four days, she’s barely slept, and she’s still recovering from the pain and ordeal of childbirth. I don’t have the first clue what that must feel like.
“I don’t know,” I concede, as I force the second of Maisie’s sandals onto her feet, and whisper to her, “Let’s go potty before we leave.”
“But, Daddy,” whines Maisie, as expected. Maisie never ever wants to use the bathroom, not until it’s an absolute emergency or she’s already had an accident. “I don’t have to go potty.”
“You need to try,” I say as I help her to her feet and watch as she disappears behind the ladies’ room door. “Should I pick up something for dinner?” I ask Clara as again my stomach rumbles. I could make something at home, hamburgers on the grill again, but with traffic, I’m guessing it will be six o’clock before I make it there, nearly seven o’clock before we eat. From the other end of the phone, there’s no response, and I envision Clara on the couch with Felix in her arms, eyes drifting off to sleep. “Clara,” I say, deciding for her, “I’ll pick up something for dinner. Maisie and I will be home soon. And then you can rest,” I say as Maisie arrives through the heavy bathroom door, and I grasp her by the hand to leave. Tonight, just as soon as I get home, I’ll take Felix from Clara’s arms and tell her to lie down for a while, to get some sleep. She won’t be able to keep up this pace much longer if she doesn’t get some sleep soon. “Chinese or Mexican?” I ask as Maisie and I head off, hand in hand, through the concourse of the old furniture factory.
Clara says Chinese.
CLARA
“I’ve been wondering where I left that,” a voice says. Izzy, whose necklace lies splayed across my hand, her tone icy as I spin around and see her standing behind me, in the doorway that separates the garage from the inside of my parents’ home. The temperature inside the garage begins an upsurge as beneath my clothing I begin to sweat.
The realization settles in slowly, an awakening, as I stare at the word Izzy now spread across the palm of my hand in curling silver. Izzy’s charm somehow disengaged from the chain. She wears the chain, thumbing at it now, though it’s only a chain, a silver chain without its charm, the jump ring that holds them together now missing.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for it,” she says. “Thank you so much for finding it, Clara,” and she reaches out a hand, waiting to reclaim the charm, thinking I’m just going to waltz right over and hand it to her. “My mother gave that to me, you know?” she asks, though of course this is something I don’t know. “When I was just a girl. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing it,” she adds, and the realization settles on me then with striking clarity. It was Izzy all along. Izzy who killed Nick. Not my mother. Not Theo Hart. Izzy.
“You did it,” I say to her, clutching that charm in my grasp, squeezing tightly, feeling the silver dig deep into my skin, drawing blood. I wait for silly and contrived excuses, but they never come. She doesn’t blame my mother, my father for her necklace being inside the car. She doesn’t hold up her hands and say, I didn’t do it, or, It wasn’t me. I found the proof, evidence that nearly puts Izzy at the scene of the crime, and now the onus is on her to refute it. I wait in vain, but the rebuttal doesn’t come.
“What are you talking about?” she asks as she steps fully into the garage, letting the door slam shut behind her so that I flinch from the force of the noise, the impact making the tools that line the wall on a wooden pegboard shake—a screwdriver, a hammer, hand rivets and hex wrenches.
“I knew all along that it wasn’t an accident,” I say brusquely, sure to keep one eye on Izzy all the time. I don’t know what she’s capable of. “I just didn’t know who, but now I do.