The Drive

Myrna drove her to the coast on a Saturday. They did not talk about why.

The ocean was thirty miles away — thirty miles of traffic and strip malls and the slow transition from city to shore that happened along the highway. Myrna drove. Liza watched. They did not talk about Drake or the storage unit or the evidence log or the full hearing in March.

They talked about food. About the restaurant Myrna wanted to try and the recipe Liza had perfected and the restaurant they would go to when this was over, when the case was closed, when the order was permanent and the record was complete and the thing that had been following her for twenty years had finally been made to stop.

"Promise me something," Myrna said, in the parking lot of a diner that smelled like coffee and salt.

"What?"

"Promise me you will not stop cooking. After. Promise me you will still make the things with the saffron."

Liza almost laughed. Almost.

"I promise," she said.

They ate clam chowder and drove back. The sun was going down by the time they got to the city, the light going slow and orange across the water, and Liza thought about the coast, about the thirty miles of it she had driven through, about how the ocean did not care about restraining orders or evidence logs or the things men did to women who tried to leave them.

She went home. She made tea. She updated the evidence log and she did not write about the coast or the chowder or the promise, because those things were not evidence, and what was not evidence was not useful, and what was not useful was not hers to give.