Free All We Know of Love by Nora Raleigh Baskin

to my side of the counter. And that’s when my mother showed up.
    She didn’t have an excuse like the other moms. “I couldn’t find my keys.” “I got mixed up with my car pool,” not even “I forgot.”
    She just walked in the office, her face blank, and said, “Is Natty OK?”

W hen the girl kicks the vending machine for the second time, the suitcase in her hand comes undone, spilling its contents, mostly makeup, onto the floor — lipsticks and mascara wands threatening to roll away.
    “Oh, no,” she cries, but she doesn’t move. She’s young, I notice. Middle school — fourth, maybe fifth grade. I get the distinct feeling she is by herself; the way she doesn’t look around for help, knows it’s not coming.
    “Don’t worry,” I say, bending down. As soon as I begin gathering her things, she gets down on the floor beside me, as if she were waiting to be told what to do. I see a loose retainer nestled among her shirts and jeans and underwear, a notebook marked PRIVATE , and a couple of framed photos.
    “Are you alone?” I ask her.
    She closes the suitcase. I snap the clasp shut and we both stand. She looks at me a minute, and I recognize the face of someone who is searching for a reasonable lie.
    “Don’t answer that,” I say, holding up my hand, and just then, as if my gesture had something to do with it, a loud clap of thunder makes its way from the outside world into the bus terminal. It nearly shakes the room. I notice that the low hum of human voices from the waiting area stops momentarily and then swells even louder in reaction.
    “Weather,” I say to the girl, as if this means something. I feel like taking her hand.
    “Yeah,” she says.
    “Wanna go check the schedule?”
    It’s funny because I feel better already; just talking to someone fills up that space, even if it’s temporary. We walk together toward the rows of green molded plastic seats in the waiting area. At the end of each row of five, a metal ashtray is attached to the armrest.
    “I’m Natalie,” I tell her.
    She seems to hesitate a moment and then says, “I’m Claire.”
    The TV monitor in the sitting area tells us that my bus leaves in an hour, at three fifteen, and Claire’s not for thirty-five minutes. Without saying so, we take seats together. If someone happened to walk by and wonder, we’d just look like two sisters, two friends, in a bus station.
    We could be coming from somewhere, could be going anywhere, and nobody would know one way or the other.
    “Well, looks like we have a wait,” I say.
    “Yeah, we do.” She looks at me and kind of smiles.
    I can tell this girl is not going to ask me where I’m going, or why, or to see whom. First, because she’s too young to pretend to care, but also because she doesn’t want me to reciprocate. She won’t ask, because she doesn’t want to have to tell.
    I’ve heard of people who can identify types of perfume right down to the brand name and country of origin. I’ve heard of people who can distinguish different regional accents to the exact city and neighborhood and street corner.
    Me?
    I can feel guilt the way a hound dog can sniff out a bone he buried in the backyard years before.
    She happened to be in the bathtub when her sister, Lily, finally died.
    Claire slid down against the cold porcelain, and she listened to her mother crying. She watched the water deepen and nearly cover the pale skin of her body, imagining her belly an island, somewhere far, far away. Outside the door, her mother wailed. Claire could hear her father’s voice, weak but comforting, thick with tears. He was walking up and down in the hall, in and out of Lily’s bedroom.
    Lily’s bedroom: metal hospital bed, a bureau top completely covered with medicine bottles, paper cups, gauze, tape. And a smell like bitter chemicals and fresh laundry, and disinfectant, and her sickness. Didn’t everything smell of Lily’s sickness?
    But Lily’s toys were lonely, Claire thought.
    Some had