The autumn breeze is cold, dry, harsh, a warning of imminent sundown. Her hair flies into her mouth and she giggles, smoothing her white loose skirt down over her hips. The ocean roars behind them, eating up the remnants of the last tide. He breathes shallowly, through his nose, lets the salt coat his lungs, thickening his voice. "You need some help with that?"
She sticks out her tongue. "Shut up, Jack." He smiles. She is happy. This is all he wanted.
Her voice is high on the wind, her mouth a ribbon of red laughter. "Aaron. Sweetheart. Let's make a sandcastle, Aaron!" Her voice rasps a little, sometimes, when she sings and when she cries. She smoked, before, before she got pregnant, before she left Australia, before she ran into him on the sidewalk and he asked for her name, not her number, before he hopped on a plane and followed her home, before she had the baby three years ago, before everything changed. She never told him this, but he knows--he recognizes the signs. Aaron toddles from Jack's arms to hers, windswept big blue eyes blinking. Claire laughs again.
She is beautiful--blond, and breakable. (She looks nothing like her, you know. Nothing like her.) She is too young for him. (His father is dead. She reminds him of himself. He has always wanted a sister.)
+
It feels like hiding, like a secret, like something too good to be true, too terrible to be spoken of. They make love in corners and beneath the stairs and sometimes on the floor, but never in bed, even when the curtains are shut tight and Aaron is fast asleep in his crib two doors down the hall, a storybook tucked beneath his arm. They don't question it because it's a habit and it's a habit because they don't question it.
She always reaches for the light switch, first. He'll never ask why.
+
She still reads her horoscope, every evening with her tea. Sometimes she reads his, too. It worries him, and he wonders, but he knows better than to say what he means.
+
The night comes more quickly on the other side of the world. She stands inert at the window, two fingers pattering on the glass, a nonsense rhythm, her favorite song. It's a song about stars and rainy days and it suits her perfectly, Jack thinks. White traffic lights make her hair glow neon, ultraviolet, her lashes dark against her cheek. The radio hums quietly on the countertop and he puts the last dish away, shutting the cupboard. A murderer has been caught, somewhere in the States--sentenced to death. He doesn't want to know.
He turns the volume down and walks up behind Claire, leaning down, his hands on her abdomen, her head falling back against his chest, a reflex. Something has changed in her eyes. Her skin is cold. "Hey," he says, quiet, afraid of something he doesn't understand. "What's going on?" What the hell is going on here? She smiles absently, exhausted. He bites his lower lip and rubs her arms.
She sighs, and moves back a little, her heels atop his toes, grounding him there, the city's eyes wide and blank on them both.
"I don't want to die," she whispers, her tapping fingers stilling against the glass. She has never sounded more far away.
+
