I COULDN’T STOP CHECKING MY phone, but Clara wasn’t texting me back. I sent one more text: Clara, please just tell me you’re okay? I wondered if she still believed in what she’d said, now that she’d had a chance to sleep on it. About Luis, about wanting to leave.And if she was right? What were we supposed to do? My phone chimed once while I was pacing the front porch, but it was only a text from Matthew. You think about it, Lil? I’ll only ask this once …

Not so long ago, I’d spent hours staring at the screen, willing him to reach out to me. It was hard, already, to believe that I had wanted him with such intensity. But what I wanted was a version of Matthew that only existed in my head: Matthew as I would have fashioned him. Penitent and sweet, adoring and humbled. A Matthew capable of remorse. I shoved my phone in my pocket without answering him. Clara would come first.

Two more hours passed and I still hadn’t heard from her, so I biked down the boardwalk—something to burn through the pent-up nerves—locked my bike to the railing across from her shop. The Open sign was out front—no star in the corner—and I could see someone sitting at the table near the window, a bowed head, bright red hair. I pushed through that stupid beaded curtain and Des stared up at me. She looked like she hadn’t slept. Had something happened to Clara? Was it possible that she had already left?

“Ah, Lily. Come for a second reading? It looks like you have a lot on your mind. Don’t worry. I can help you find the answers.” She reached for her deck of tarot cards.

“I’m just looking for Clara.”

“Oh, thank God,” she said, in a flattened voice. “I’m hungover as all hell.”

“Is she home?”

“No, your little pet is not home. I don’t know where she is and frankly I don’t care.”

“You don’t keep tabs on her when she’s meeting up with clients?”

Des bit a hangnail and spit it on the floor. Both of them bit their nails. They had the same raw cuticles. “Ah, so you know about that, too, huh? She cuts me out of the money, she might gain a little cash, but she loses my protection.”

“That seems harsh.”

“It’s her choice. I warned her about this. About turning tricks behind my back.”

“So that makes you what? Her pimp?”