One Cold Night

of the year. She wished she could be that lucky child. Maybe she already was. She bent down and, nearly touching her nose to the cellophane, stole some of the smell off the air.
    The swinging doors to the factory were propped open. She kept the lights off when she passed through. The door leading into the garage was locked with a simple bolt, which she lifted and slid.
    The old-fashioned pickup truck, painted cream with WATER STREET CHOCOLATES in brown script on both doors, was parked in the small garage. In the far corner was a heavy-duty plastic cabinet containing tools, odds and ends, and the small can of yellow paint Susan had long ago bought for Dave to paint the line that would warn cars against parking in front of the garage. A brand new paintbrush, still in its plastic sheath, sat on top of the can.
    Over the summer, Lisa had offered to paint the lineherself. Susan had hesitated, almost accepting, but changed her mind.
    “Dave said he’d do it.”
    Lisa wondered why Susan didn’t just let someone else paint that line; she had no lack of employees. She was probably trying to give Dave a chance to keep his promise. Well, the summer had passed and it was autumn now, colorful and chilly, and he still hadn’t done it.
    Lisa would do it herself, right now; she would paint the yellow line not to keep a promise, but to make one. She would promise Susan her love.
    It seemed like a bad idea to open the garage door, putting Susan’s truck on display so late at night, with the interior factory door gaping. So she took the can of paint, a screwdriver to pry open the top, a stick to stir the paint and the brush to paint the line, and crossed back through the factory and the shop. She shut the front door behind her but didn’t lock it. Besides the distant buzz of bridge traffic, her footsteps were the only sounds, echoing a little as she set herself up in front of the shallow naked curb that would soon be a bright, warning yellow.
    The oil-based paint went on thick and syrupy, oozing into cracks and pockmarks in the curb. Lisa liked the sour smell and the heavy feel of dragging the yellow paint along the old, worn stone. The line was two-thirds finished when the clip-clop of someone walking materialized in a lull of the traffic drone. The footsteps were slow, casual. She looked up: It was the loner guy from before, the stone skipper. She saw now that he was wearing the kind of tan canvas jacket you ordered from the outdoorsy catalogs that were always piling up in the magazine rack at home in Texas.Daddy had one of those jackets in blue. Loner Man walked along the middle of the street, tossing a rock larger than a skipping stone from one hand to the other. He wasn’t exactly looking at her, but somehow, she felt, he saw her. Watching him keenly, she lifted the dripping paintbrush off the curb.

Chapter 3
    Tuesday, 10:45 p.m.
    Susan leaned out the open window through which she had caught her last glimpse of Lisa entering the park on their corner. It was where Lisa went to read or sometimes play her guitar when she wanted to be alone. It was now fifteen minutes since Susan had seen her beloved daughter — her daughter! — navigate the old iron tracks heel-to-toe just like when she was a little girl. Seeing her tightrope the same curved lines had brought hope to Susan’s heart, reminding her that only labels had changed tonight, not facts. Mother would substitute for sister, and when Lisa realized that, when she understood that nothing had really changed, things would begin to fall into place for both of them.
    Fifteen minutes, a small piece of an hour, yet time felt slow as a dream, when a minute could take a year, a year a minute, or time ceased to move altogether. Lisa had stepped off the rail track and walked into the park, rounding the asphalt path until she was beyond Susan’s view.
    Now, leaning out the broad window into the cold night, Susan couldn’t see Lisa anywhere. Across the street, the empty windows of a gutted warehouse held shadows abraded by dusty filaments of moonlight. The street was quiet and a few people walked casually in the park.
    From Audrey McInnis, the mother of Lisa’s Brooklyn best friend, Glory McInnis, Susan had learned that eleven o’clock was the witching hour, when parents were allowed to worry. Until the strike of eleven, you were required to grind back all concerns about your errant teenager. There had been so much for Susan to learn since Lisa came to live with them last year.