Outside, dawn lit the smog. I lay in bed, closed my eyes, and pictured the mountain scene, its purple frosted light and tiny cedars dusted with white. I drifted off among the trees.

CHAPTER SIX

I woke in the late afternoon, fuzzy and unsettled. I couldn’t remember much of the night before. I checked my purse and my pockets for clues. My cigarettes were gone. I’d either lost them or smoked them. I checked my phone and saw a voice mail from Sally, plus the café had called four times. I had completely missed my shift. My manager would be gone by now. I’d have to go in and talk to him. I hoped I wasn’t fired.

I listened to the message from Sally. I’d never heard her voice shake like this.

“Charlotte, honey, it’s Sally Reeves. I guess you heard what happened. If you’re free this evening could you stop over? We need to talk. It’s important.”

I didn’t want to see Sally ever again. But what could I do? Her daughter was dead. I showered and dressed, still feeling like shit. I went outside and discovered my car wasn’t there. Okay, I must’ve left it at the bar. I rode my bike to the corner store for cigarettes and smoked one on my way to the Harp. My old Nissan sat alone under the magnolia at the rear of the lot. I angled the bike into the trunk and drove to the Vietnamese deli on Travis for coffee and a banh mi.

Cars on Milam Street whirled light through the plate-glass window. I finished my sandwich, even the jalapenos, the heat of the peppers waking me. I smoked and flipped through the paper. Danielle’s murder was on the front page and in the Metro section. They had printed a photograph of the motel where Danielle died, an old, shabby place. I wondered why she had gone there. Another photo of an interior had the caption, “A room in the Astro Motel similar to the one where Reeves’ body was found.” It didn’t look particularly special—a bed, a lamp, a mirror, a sink. No blood anywhere, no indication of the gore in those other photographs, the ones the detective showed me.

I turned to the inside of the Metro section and saw an old picture of Danielle that I remembered from high school. She wore my shirt in the photo, a thrift-store T-shirt with a silk-screened swing set on the front. She stretched it out—her boobs were bigger than mine, even before she got them done—so I had let her keep it. Next to that was a family photo I hadn’t seen before, taken when Danielle was about twelve and already pretty in a sultry, grown-up way.

I left the paper on the table and stopped on Fannin to buy flowers, a white bouquet of lilies and some tiny round buds, I forgot their name. I spent a lot. It was Sally’s money, after all. I wondered if Danielle would have liked them. If she even liked flowers. We never bought flowers, or talked about flowers. Flowers weren’t exactly a part of our lives.