E Is for Evidence

help her with the groceries instead. Are you staying at your moth-er's?"
    He nodded. "I got in Thursday night and then Olive called yesterday and said she was putting the party to-gether. Seems like years ago. I was having a swim before I got dressed when Ebony showed up at the side of the pool. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. You know Eb. Always in control, never a hair out of place. Well, she looked like a wild woman. I pulled myself up on the side of the pool and she said a bomb had gone off at Olive's house and she was dead. I thought she was making the whole thing up. I laughed. It was so far-fetched, I couldn't help myself. She slapped the shit out of me and that's when I realized she was serious. What happened? Terry can't re-member and the police won't tell us much."
    I told him what I could, omitting the gruesome details of Olive's injuries. Even talking about it made me shake. I clamped my teeth shut, trying to relax. "Sorry," I said.
    "It's my fault. I shouldn't have brought it up," he said. "I didn't mean to put you through it all again."
    I shook my head. "That's fine. I'm okay. Nobody's told me much either. Honestly, I think it helps. The blanks are frustrating." I was looking for a narrative thread to hang fragments on. I'd lost the night. Everything from 4:30 on had been deleted from my memory bank.
    He hesitated for a moment and then filled me in on events from his end. Ash had left. She was on her way to Olive's to help set up for the party. As soon as he heard about the explosion, he pulled some clothes on and he and Ebony jumped in the car. They arrived to find Terry being loaded into the ambulance. I was being bundled onto a stretcher, semiconscious. Olive was still lying near the shrubs, covered by a blanket.
    Bass's recital of events was flat, like a news report. He was calm, his tone impersonal. He made no eye contact. I stared down the hall where a doctor with a somber expres-sion was talking to an older couple sitting on a bench. The news must have been bad because the woman clutched and unclutched the purse in her lap.
    I remembered then that I had seen, Bass… one of the faces scrutinizing mine, bobbing above me like a balloon on a string. By then, shock had set in and I was shiver-ing uncontrollably, in spite of the blankets they'd wrapped me in. I didn't remember Ebony. Maybe they had kept her out by the road, refusing to let her any closer to the car-nage. The bomb had made tatters of Olive's flesh. Hunks of her body had been blown against the hedges, like clots of snow.
    I put a hand against my face, feeling flushed with tears. Bass patted me awkwardly, murmuring nonsense, upset that he'd upset me, probably wondering how to get out of it. The emotion passed and I collected myself, taking a deep breath. "What about Terry's injuries?"
    "Not bad. A cut on his forehead. Couple of cracked ribs where the blast knocked him into the garage. They wanted him in for observation, but he seems okay."
    There was activity behind us and the door to Terry's room opened. A nurse came out bearing a stainless steel bowl full of soiled bandages. She seemed enveloped in aromas of denatured alcohol, tincture of iodine, and the distinctive smell of adhesive tape.
    "You can go in now. Doctor said he can leave any time. We'll get a wheelchair for him when he's ready to go down."
    Bass went in first. I wheeled myself in behind. A nurse's aide was straightening the bed table where the nurse had been working. Terry was sitting on the edge of the bed, buttoning up his shirt. I caught sight of his taped ribs through the loose flaps of his shirt and I looked away. His torso was stark white and hairless, his chest narrow and without musculature. Illness and injury seem so personal. I didn't want to know the details of his frailty.
    He looked battered, with a dark track sketched along his forehead where the stitches had been put in. One wrist was bandaged, from cuts perhaps, or burns. His face was pale, his moustache stark, his dark hair disheveled. He seemed shrunken, as if Olive's death had diminished him.
    Ebony appeared in the doorway, taking in the scene with a cursory glance. She hesitated, waiting for the aide to finish. The room seemed unbearably crowded. I needed fresh air.
    "I'll come back in a minute," I murmured. I wheeled myself out. Ebony followed me as far as the visitors' lounge, a small alcove with a green tweed couch, two matching chairs, an artificial palm, and an ashtray. She took a