“You told me that you haven’t spoken to Seth until recently, that you’ve been over for years, so why would he tell his ex-wife something like that?”

The server appears at our table with a fresh pot of coffee and a mug. She fills the empty mug without a word and sets it in front of Regina, then leans over to top mine off. When she’s gone, Regina pulls her mug toward her, cradling it, but doesn’t take a sip.

I stare at her without speaking, waiting for her to continue.

“What do you remember about your miscarriage?” she asks.

I bristle under her question. I don’t remember much, I try not to; the details of my miscarriage are painful.

“Thursday...” Regina reaches out a hand to touch mine and I stare at it, shocked. “Please,” she says. “This is important.”

“All right...” I lick my lips and shut my eyes, trying to remember the details of the most painful day of my life. “I remember a lot of pain...and blood. Being rushed to the hospital...”

“What about before that? Where were you?”

“I... We were away. A weekend trip north.”

She leans forward, elbows on the table. Her eyebrows draw together, the slash between them deep. “What did you eat...drink...? Did he give you anything?”

I shake my head. “Of course we ate. Seth wasn’t drinking alcohol because I couldn’t. I had tea...”

“What type of tea?”

I don’t miss the urgency in her voice. It looks like she wants to leap across the table and shake me.

“It was a tea he said his mother sent for me. To help with the nausea.” The moment the words are out of my mouth I feel the blood drain from my face. I’m light-headed. I grip the edge of the table for support and close my eyes. Regina had said that Seth’s parents were dead. Where did that tea really come from and why would he tell me his mother sent it?

“I had terrible sickness, all day...” I can feel myself swaying; I take a few deep breaths to calm myself.

“Herbal tea,” Regina says softly. “In a little brown sack.”

I nod. “Yes.”

“Was it the first time he gave it to you?”

I think back. I’d been complaining about it; my doctor had prescribed something for the nausea but it hadn’t worked, so Seth suggested I try his mother’s tea.

“She’s had quite a few pregnancies, Thursday,” he’d said with a smile when I’d asked him if it was safe. “All of my mothers used it.”

I’d laughed at that, and he’d winked at me. In the end, he made me the tea, boiling water in the room’s little kettle. It had tasted like licorice and coriander and once I added some sugar I hadn’t minded it at all.

“You drank it all weekend?” Regina asked.

I nodded.

“All right,” she says. “Okay...”

Her face is pale, her eyelashes fluttering. And then she opens her rosebud mouth and tells me a story. And I wish she could take it all back, swallow it into herself so that I can pretend it’s not so. I’m not that stupid. I’m not that gullible. I’m not so easily used.

   THIRTY-TWO

I leave the diner an hour later with nowhere to go. I don’t want to go back to the Cottonmouth house with its peeling wallpaper and musty smell. After Regina told Seth I was in Portland, he’d waste no time driving here. To what—reason with me? Drag me back to Seattle? I’m not ready to see him. I could go home, drive the two hours and beat him to it. I’d have enough time to grab some of my things and go stay with my parents. But my mother had not believed me when I was in the hospital and I tried to tell her the truth. I have no idea what their communication has been like over the last few days. Most likely, Seth had told her a partial truth: that I disappeared in the middle of the night, and that they need to find me before I hurt myself. I’m on my own. The confrontation with Seth inevitable, I’m going to have to face him soon, but Regina has asked for more time, and I’m going to give her more time. What she told me while sitting under the fluorescent lights of Larry’s had given me chills, rolled my stomach, made me doubt myself. My coffee had grown cold, a film appearing over the top as I slouched in the booth and listened to the dry recounting of her experience.

I drive until I see a shopping plaza that houses a large chain grocery store. It doesn’t open for another few hours. I park in the back of the building, out of sight of the street, where I don’t feel exposed, and recline my seat all the way back so I can sleep. Just a few hours.

I wake with a start to someone pounding on my car window. I bolt upright, groggy and disoriented.

“You can’t park here,” a man barks, peering through the window.

He’s wearing an orange and yellow vest, and while he pounds again he looks over his shoulder, distracted. I flinch as his fist hits the window close to my face. His fist is big and tan; it matches his shoulders, which are wide.

When he looks back at me, he says, “You’re blocking the way.”

I look behind him and see a garbage truck idling in the alley, waiting to get to the dumpster that my car is blocking. Without raising my seat, I turn on the ignition and hit the gas, driving around to the front of the store. I pull into another spot, thrown off by the sudden wake-up and the brute of a man who did it. Scrubbing the sleep from my eyes, I yawn. I need to go somewhere private, where I can think without garbage men screaming at me. I decide on the public library; they’ll have computers I could use. I’d driven past it the last time I was in the city having dinner with Seth; the elegant brick-and-stone structure caught my eye with its old-school beauty.

I can’t remember the street it’s on or the name of the branch, I have to rely on my memory to find it. I have to rely on my instincts to find it. It takes me forty minutes of weaving up and down the busy Portland streets, trying to remember exactly where I’d seen it. When I finally catch sight of the building, a group of homeless men are packing up their belongings, getting ready to traverse the city for the day. Since it’s still early, the lot used for parking is relatively empty, and I find a spot close to the building. The smell of urine hits me as soon as I step out of the car. Also, it’s freezing without a jacket. I hurry toward the building and find the doors unlocked. Breathing a sigh of relief, I duck inside, shivering, clutching my orange sweater around my fingers like gloves. The interior of the library is all open space underneath a domed skylight. I walk quickly through the lobby and toward the computers.

“Two hours,” she says. “No eating or drinking.” Her voice is dry, brittle and unsympathetic. She’s more recording than person. When I nod compliantly, she eyes me suspiciously, like I might be hiding my breakfast underneath my sweater, but I’m allowed into the room.