I Had Forgotten Her

Marina Crowell's face stiffened at my answer, though she recovered fast.

She held out a bottle of water she'd just bought. The gesture came out stiff.

"Don't choke."

It was free, so I took it and thanked her quietly.

I could tell Marina had something she wanted to say.

She didn't say it, and I didn't ask.

I finished the last few bites mechanically, climbed onto my beat-up delivery scooter, and picked up another order.

As I fastened my helmet, Marina called my name.

"Adrian!"

Habit turned me around. Her voice carried something close to desperation. "If you ever need help, call me."

I smiled. "Probably won't get the chance."

I ran deliveries until after midnight.

Back in the cramped little room I rented, I rolled up my pant leg and worked the ointment in without thinking about it.

My knee wasn't shaped like anyone else's.

Five years, and I could still feel exactly what it was like to have the bone shattered.

It came back on the rainy days, in the damp dark of a cell, and after too many hours on the road left the leg numb.

It would wake up without warning and go to work on me all over again.

It felt like the memory of the day six years ago, when I found out Marina had placed me on the board like a piece she'd been saving.

That knowledge had gone through me the same slow way, over and over.

Time dulls everything, though. Even the leg was getting better.

I woke before sunrise.

It was the anniversary of Grandma Ruth's death.

She'd been the only person in the world who wanted nothing from me except that I be all right.

I put in for the day off, pulled on the faded clothes I'd owned seven years ago, and went out to Meadowglass Cemetery.

I brought her roses still wet with morning dew.

Roses aren't what you bring to a grave, but this was my first visit. She would have liked them.

I knelt in front of her headstone and talked for a long time, and I only stopped when I heard footsteps behind me.

Some part of me had been expecting it.

Even so, when I turned and saw Marina, my breath stopped.

She'd left the designer suit behind for a plain white dress.

The plainness of it threw me.

For a second she wasn't the woman eaten alive by money and leverage.

She was the clean, quiet girl I used to know.