her expression deadpan.
“Ha. I deserved that. Still, I’m curious. You’re a lovely, bright young woman. Makes me wonder…”
She didn’t want him to wonder about her. She was a very private person, not as a matter of choice, but as a matter of life and death. She lived a life made up of lies that had no substance, and secrets she could never share. The things that were true about her were the shallow details, cocktail party fare, not that she got invited to cocktail parties. The person she was deep inside stayed hidden, and that was probably for the best. Who would want to know about the endless nights, when her loneliness was so deep and sharp she felt as though she’d been hollowed out? Who would want to know she was so starved for a human touch that sometimes her skin felt as if it were on fire? Who could understand the way she wished to crawl out of her skin and walk away?
Back when she’d gone underground, she had saved her own life. But it wasn’t until much later that she’d realized the cost. It had been simple and exorbitant; she’d given up everything, even her identity.
“Tell you what,” she said, “let’s keep the focus on you.”
“I’ve never been able to resist a woman of mystery,” he declared. “I’ll find out if it kills me. It might just kill me.” His amusement wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Humor had its uses, even in this situation.
“You have better things to do with your time than pry into my life, George. I’d rather hear about you, anyway. This summer is all about you.”
“And you don’t find that depressing? Hanging around an old man, waiting for him to die?”
“All kidding aside,” she said, “things will go a lot better if you decide to make this summer about your life, not about your death.”
“My family thinks you’re not right for me.”
“I guessed that when they called the police on us. Maybe I’m not right. We’ll see.”
“So far, we’re getting along famously.” He paused. “Aren’t we?”
“You just hired me. We’ve only been together for three days.”
“Yes, but it’s been an intense three days,” he pointed out. “Including this long drive from the city. You can tell a lot about a person on a car trip. You and I are getting along fine.” Another pause. “You’re silent. You don’t agree?”
Claire had a policy of trying to be truthful whenever possible. There were so many lies in other areas of her life, this need not be one of them. “Well,” she said almost apologetically, “there was the singing, back in Poughkeepsie.”
“Everybody sings on car trips,” he said. “It’s the American way.”
“All right. Forget I said anything.”
“Was I really that bad?”
“You were pretty bad, George.”
“Damn.” He flipped through a few pages of his notebook.
“Just keeping it real,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t mind that you hated my singing,” he said. “But you’re making me rethink something on my list. Ah, here it is. I wanted to perform a song for my family.”
“You could still do that.”
“What, so they won’t be sad to see me go?”
“You just need a little backup music for accompaniment, and you’ll be fine.”
“Are you up for it?” he asked.
“No way. I can’t sing. I’ll find someone to help you.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
Simple, she thought. All she needed to do was find a karaoke place. And get his family to show up. Okay, maybe not so simple.
“Judging by our encounter with Officer Friendly, your relatives are pretty unhappy with me,” she said. She didn’t much care. As her client, George was her sole concern. Still, it always went better if the family was supportive of the arrangement, because families had a way of complicating things. Sometimes she told herself that the lack of a family was a blessing in disguise. Certainly it was a complication she never had to deal with.
She often imagined about what it was like to have a family, the way a severe diabetic might think about eating a cake with burnt-sugar icing. It was never going to happen, but a girl could fantasize. Sometimes she covertly attended family gatherings—graduation ceremonies, outdoor weddings, even the occasional funeral—just to see what it was like to have a family. She had a fascination with the obituary page of the paper, her attention always drawn to lengthy lists of family members left behind. Which, when she thought about it, was kind of pathetic, but it seemed harmless enough.
“They’re too quick to judge,” he said. “They haven’t even met you yet.”
“Well, you did make all these arrangements rather quickly.”
“If I hadn’t, they would have tried to stop me. They’d say we’re incompatible, that you and I are far too different,” he pointed out.
“Nonsense,” said Claire. “You’re a blueblood, and I’m blue collar—it’s just a color.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“We’re all in the same race,” she added.
“I’m closer to the finish line.”
“I thought we were going to try to keep a positive attitude.”
“Sorry.”
“This is going to go well,” she promised him.
“It’s going to end badly for one of us.”
“Then let’s not focus on the ending.”
There were known psychological and clinical end-of-life stages people went through when facing a devastating diagnosis—shock, rage, denial and so forth. Everyone in her field of work had memorized them. In practice, patients expressed their stages in ways that were as different and individual as people themselves.
Some held despair at bay with denial, or by displaying a smart-alecky attitude about death. George seemed quite happy to be in that phase. His wry sense of humor appealed to her. Of course, he was using humor and sarcasm to keep the darker things at bay—dread and uncertainty, abject fear, regret, despair. In time, those might or might not materialize. It was her job to be there through everything.
All her previous patients had been in the city, where it was possible to be an anonymous face in the crowd. This was the first time she had ventured somewhere like this—small and old-fashioned, more like an illustration in a storybook than a real place. It was like coming to a theme park, overrun by trees and beautiful wilderness areas and dotted with picturesque farms and painted houses.
“Avalon,” she said as they passed another welcome sign, this one marked with a contrived-looking
