Here She Lies

table where two windows met at the joint of two walls, Bobby sat face-to-face with another man. Bobby was talking and the man was listening, writing things down.
    Lexy at this point was trying to get to my breast and I had to hold her pretty tightly. I felt terrible making her wait, but I had to greet Bobby first. He stood up. He was wearing jeans and the red sweatshirt with an illustratedfish that we’d bought last summer on vacation in Cape Cod. He came over to us and took Lexy into his arms. The man seemed to watch his every move. Lexy curved herself into Bobby’s chest as he caressed her little back and then she twisted around and reached for me.
    “I guess you better nurse her now,” he said. The soft grittiness of his voice evoked a longing in me. I had left him. We were separated.
    “You okay?” I asked him.
    Bobby looked at me — his face was so sad — and didn’t answer. I heard him exhale as I turned around and settled into the couch, next to Julie, unbuttoning the bright sweater and angling myself so she could help me slide out of it. She folded it on her lap and I let Lexy into my shirt. My darling baby sucked ferociously, her chubby hands pressing on my swollen breasts; I could feel the warm milk pass through my ducts, from my body into hers, relieving me and sating her. Julie watched closely as Lexy nursed. I could hear the man stand up and walk around the couch until he was facing me.
    He was small, on the thin side. His hair was pitch-black and tousled, obviously dyed, and the contrast with his pale skin made him look older than he probably was. I put him at fifty-five, give or take. His gray eyes looked tired, but he had a friendly mouth. He half smiled at me and it seemed as if he wanted to speak but wasn’t sure what the rules were when a woman’s naked breast was showing. He avoided looking at it. Lexy must have sensed he was there because she smacked off my nipple to face him, then nuzzled herface against my exposed nipple and latched back on. The man’s face reddened as he introduced himself. “Detective Gabe Lazare, Great Barrington Police.”
    Ah, of course: a detective.
    “I’m Annie,” I said.
    “Figured as much.” His hand inched forward, then pulled back when he realized I wouldn’t be able to shake, as my arms were full of Lexy.
    Behind me, Bobby paced the room. Detective Lazare sat down on the opposite branch of the couch, away from Julie and me. He was calm, deeply calm. I felt it immediately, how the mood in the room shifted from edgy to oddly tranquil. Something about this man made me feel he must be a good detective, the way he altered the tone just by sitting down with us, just being there and waiting. What were we waiting for? I supposed we were waiting for the woman’s killer to waltz in and introduce himself: Here I am! Sorry for the inconvenience. But that wasn’t going to happen. Already whole minutes were sliding by with no one speaking. This could be a long wait. And the more I thought about it, the more I wondered what it had to do with us. She had been killed on my sister’s lawn — no, on the road in front of her lawn. Not, officially, her property. It was a terrible, terrible thing. That poor woman! But for us, realistically, it would probably be over by morning.
    Lexy’s nursing became more relaxed, she sighed and her body grew supple and sleepy in my arms. As she relaxed so did I, at least a little. In the turmoil of arriving everything had seemed to blend into the darkness, but now details came into focus. I noticed thatJulie had on her typical outfit of designer jeans and fitted T-shirt, along with brown cowboy boots that looked weathered but must have been new; I had never seen them before. Next to my trim sister I felt big and sloppy and realized in one bad flash of a moment how out of shape I’d become since Lexy’s birth. I was a fish out of water, a Kentucky mama in a posh living room on a fashionable mountain with a sexy woman who used to be me. But then I thought of Zara, poor Zara, who was dead, and sitting here with my family I felt acutely alive, even lucky. With a shiver of revulsion I recalled the sight of Zara’s body: heavily inert, violently disordered. Had she been murdered? Or had it been arbitrary — the dumb luck of wrong place, wrong time ? (What if I had arrived earlier or Julie had gone outside? It could have been our blood that now stained the road.) I ran my hand along Lexy’s soft skin and just as I thought she