Free Head Rush by Carolyn Crane

she’s a hoot at movies, especially if you trick her into going to a life-affirming one.
    I wait, hoping she’s still okay with all this. I’d told Otto that having our wedding just two months after Avery’s death was too soon, but it was Shelby who talked me into it—literally out in the car after Avery’s funeral. It shocked the stuffing out of me.
    “You must grab happiness while you can,” she’d said.
    “You don’t even believe in happiness,” I’d reminded her.
    She’d gazed over at the funeral home. “Of course, I do not. Is all doomed. But for a little while we can pretend it is not so.” And then she’d turned to me, there on that gray January day, and she’d said, “What is wrong with feeling safe and good?”
    My line.
    My line when she’d criticized my engagement to Otto just a week before that. She’d accused me of wanting to marry him out of fear, as a reaction to the shooting. And I’d said, What’s wrong with feeling safe and good?
    I watch the numbers above the elevator door flash, one after another, thinking about that bizarre conversation. It was as if we’d switched places, philosophically.
    “Will be Camelot wedding,” she’d told me.
    Camelot wedding. This from the woman who says all celebrations are useless and empty. She’d insisted on being my maid of honor. She’d pressed me until I’d consented.
    I’m startled out of my memory by the ding and the doors, and Shelby steps out, lush and lovely in her luxurious black curls and black outfit.
    “Hello, Justine,” she says in her usual monotone.
    “Hi, honey.” I go to her and squeeze her hands. She’s not a big hugger. She’s barely a toucher these days.
    I take her black coat, missing the garish, clashing colors she used to wear. “How are you? What did you do today?”
    She sighs. “Mooned around apartment.”
    “Ah. Mooning. But no starring? No sunning?”
    She doesn’t think that’s funny. We go into the living room and sit close to the fire. I serve us a glass of champagne from a bucket and tell her about getting back my car. She doesn’t seem surprised or unhappy about Simon being a bridesmaid, and even weirder, she isn’t angry about Packard’s visit or my failure to turn him in quickly.
    Instead, she’s philosophical. “Why would he do this, Justine?” she asks. “Why should he take such a risk? To see you?” She asks this pointedly, as though she really wants me to come up with an answer. She waits, lips parted, revealing her chipped front tooth, which makes her look like a beautiful thug.
    I snort. “Who knows? Otto always says you can only understand Packard’s motivations in hindsight.”
    She frowns, disappointed with my answer. “Killer of Avery will pay and pay and pay,” she hisses; then she stands and strolls across the bright oriental rugs to the far wall, touches a large oil painting Otto recently acquired. Otto tends toward magical realism in his art tastes. Forests and winged beasts.
    My heart breaks to look at her there, so fiercely isolated. During the short weeks they were together, she and Avery had become a unit in every way, and instead of softening her grim view the world, Avery brought his own fiery brand of it to her, and they challenged and enlivened each other.
    And she’d loved him.
    Shelby speaks without facing me. “Did you check it? Check car?”
    “What do you mean, check it?”
    “If anything is gone? Anything unusual?”
    “I’m not messing with the trunk or glove compartment until it gets dusted for fingerprints. Except, one weird thing—Gumby was different.”
    She turns. “How?”
    “In a happy position. I guarantee you, I didn’t leave him like that.”
    “Really!” She comes and sits back down with me, her gaze boring into mine. “What do you imagine might explain that?”
    “Either the tow truck driver changed Gumby, or a certain somebody’s trying to make me think I’m crazy…” I raise my eyebrows. Meaning Packard.
    She sits there looking