Lily stared at the card as if it might contain a condition written in very small print. Eventually she stepped close enough to collect it, careful that their hands did not touch. She tucked it into the driest part of her jacket and backed away, still watching him. Then she gave a small nod and hurried toward the street. Ray remained beside the broken lamp until she disappeared around the corner, where the bus shelter and the first row of apartment buildings began.
He returned to the bar carrying the wet paper wrapper that had fallen from the sandwich, though he could not have said why he bothered picking it up. The waitress had already taken his plate. She stood behind the counter with a dishcloth over one shoulder, looking at him in the way people looked at Ray when they knew he was thinking about something he did not want to discuss. She poured fresh coffee without asking.
"Did you find her?"
"Yeah."
"And?"
"She took it home to her mother."
The waitress put the pot down slowly. "Lord."
"You got anything left in the kitchen that travels well?"
"Soup, bread, chicken. I can pack a couple meals."
Ray pulled out his wallet. "Pack four."
"She coming back?"
"I don't know." He stared through the window at the rain. "But I want to be ready if she does."
The waitress returned twenty minutes later with two bags filled with warm containers. She had included fruit and a small carton of milk without charging him, although Ray noticed and quietly left extra money under the coffee cup. He carried the bags to his truck, placed them on the seat, and drove along the streets behind the highway. At the corner where Lily had vanished, he slowed almost to a stop. Then he continued home, understanding that looking for her without permission would not necessarily make her safer.
At his house, the kitchen smelled faintly of dust and the coffee he had forgotten to wash from that morning's mug. The place was clean but bare. One plate occupied the drying rack, one coat hung beside the door, and the second chair at the kitchen table had not been used in months. Ray put the extra food in the refrigerator, folded his vest over the back of the chair, and opened the drawer where he kept things he could not make himself throw away. Inside lay a small photograph curled at the corners and an old pay-phone receipt with its ink nearly gone.
The photograph showed two young men beside a secondhand motorcycle, one broad and serious, the other laughing with his head tipped back. Ray was twenty-nine in the picture, his beard dark and his eyebrow still unscarred. The younger man beside him was his brother, only twenty-three and always certain the world would eventually become kinder if he stayed cheerful long enough. Ray stared at the photograph without unfolding the crease that ran through both their faces. In the silence of the house, he could hear a telephone ringing in a memory he had spent most of his adult life trying not to answer.