Archive of Our Own

It's not even noon, and she smells like blood. That's not the strange part. The strange part is that she's wearing her old gray sweater--bulky, unflattering, the warmest one she owns--and a scarf that belonged to a man now dead. She's always has a habit of drawing herself inside this sweater--covering her hands with the sleeves, wrapping it more tightly around herself--but she does it now and the smell just gets stronger.

She unwraps the scarf carefully and lays it over the back of a chair. She strips off the sweater and throws it into a corner of the room. She contemplates the liquor cabinet, but settles for going into the kitchen and putting the kettle on to boil for tea.

There's a knock at the front door. The peephole reveals John Carter. She's surprised he knows where she lives, but she opens up. "Hi."

His arms are crossed over his chest--awkwardness, she guesses, rather than cold. "I wanted to make sure you were OK."

The kettle begins to whistle. "I'm fine," Carol says. It begins to shriek, and she adds, "I was making tea. Do you want some?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure. Tea would be great."

He closes the door behind him, and she pours the boiling water over two bags in a pot. There's silence to allow for the addition of milk and sugar. Carter wraps his hands around the mug and says, "Do you want to talk about it?"

She looks up at him, her eyebrows twitching upward despite her better efforts, but he seems serious. "I don't know," she answers, finally. "But I'll tell you what happened."

He nods, and she does.

It's a lengthier story than she expected. The entire string of events, from her mother's phone call to Duncan's death, were a matter of less than three hours. And there isn't a great deal to say about much of it--we sat in Novotny's, James bled. And then there are the parts she doesn't say: I was scared. I was so scared.

And yet it takes so long to tell.

They don't move out of the kitchen, but they wind up sitting on the floor, her back to the cabinets, his to the wall, with the pot between them. She pours the last of the tea and concludes, "I took his scarf. It's in the living room"--she gestures in that direction--"on the back of the chair. I don't know why I did that."

"Sometimes we need markers," Carter says. "To remember things other people might not ever understand."

She nods.

"For what it's worth, it sounds like you did everything you could. Probably more than anyone else could have. Definitely more than anyone could be expected to."

She closes her eyes and rests her head against the old stained wood. "I'm not sure how much it mattered, in the end. Mr. Novotny died. Duncan died."

Carter reaches across the narrow path of linoleum and takes her hand. His long fingers are gentle and certain. "Duncan died because of his own choices. He could have surrendered; he chose not to. You helped the living; that's what matters."

She opens her eyes again. His are dark-amber brown, and concerned. She doesn't respond in words, but she pulls on his hand; it only takes him a moment to interpret the request, and he comes over to sit next to her. He keeps hold of her hand, and she leans against him, and they sit like that in the warm kitchen on a gray Chicago day.