I set the blue ceramic coffee mug down on the counter and listened to the dial tone fade into static.
The kitchen window was cold against my forehead where I leaned.
Martha at the front desk had tapped her pen twice before speaking again.
“I am sorry, who exactly is sitting there?” I asked.
“Your sister Clara,” Martha said.
“That is impossible,” I said.
“She is filling out the new patient paperwork right now.”
“She passed away ten years ago,” I said.
“Well, she is sitting in the third chair from the water cooler and she has your eyes,” Martha said.
I looked at the half finished coffee beside the sink.
The liquid had formed a dark ring around the inside of the rim.
“Did she give you insurance information?” I asked.
“She paid the new patient exam fee in cash,” Martha said.
“What kind of car is parked outside the office?” I asked.
“She walked in from the bus stop on Oak Street,” Martha said.
I tightened my fingers around the edge of the laminate counter until the wood beneath bit into my palm.
“I am leaving the house now,” I said.
“Drive carefully,” Martha said, and the line went dead.
I picked up my car keys from the hook by the pantry.
The metal rings jingled twice before I closed my fist around them.
The hallway floorboards creaked under my shoes as I walked to the front door.
I turned the deadbolt and pulled the door open to the autumn air.
My car sat alone in the gravel driveway with yellow leaves stuck to the windshield.
I got behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition.
The engine sputtered once before catching in a low vibration.
I put the transmission into reverse and backed out toward the road.
The asphalt on the county highway was slick with morning dew.
I kept my hands at ten and two on the steering wheel while the miles passed.
The strip mall dental office appeared behind the hardware store between a dry cleaner and a vacant bakery.
I parked in the designated visitor spot facing the brick wall.
The engine clicked as I turned off the key.
I pushed open the door and stepped out onto the paved lot.
The front glass doors of the office showed poster boards advertising teeth whitening and Saturday appointments.
I pulled the handle and walked inside into the smell of rubbing alcohol and old magazines.
Martha looked up from behind the high reception counter with her pen poised over a ledger.
“You made good time,” Martha said.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Second row by the window,” Martha said.
I turned my head toward the vinyl chairs against the far wall.
A woman with short dark hair sat with her head bent over a silver ring on her right hand.
She twisted the metal slowly around her finger without looking up.
“Clara,” I said.
The woman stopped twisting the ring and raised her chin.
“You were always terrible at speeding,” Clara said.
The strip mall clinic smelled of floor wax and cooling plastic.
A plastic plant sat on a low table beside three copies of a gardening magazine from two years ago.
The receptionist did not look up when the glass slid back two inches.
“Take a seat and someone will call her name in a minute,” she said.
I did not sit down.
The waiting room had four orange chairs bolted to a metal rail bolted to the tile floor.
A woman with a shorter haircut sat in the second chair with her coat zipped to her chin.
She was twisting a silver ring around her right index finger over and over again.
“You do not have to believe everything right now,” she said without looking up at the wall.
The voice was lower than I remembered, flattened by ten years of whatever rooms she had been sleeping in, but the rhythm of the sentence belonged to our ninth summer behind the garage.
My boots made a dry sound on the linoleum as I walked closer.
“Clara,” I said.
She stopped twisting the silver ring and looked up at the ceiling tiles before she looked at me.
Her left eyebrow had a small white scar near the corner from the time we tipped the wheelbarrow into the gravel.
“You found the number,” she said.
“Martha called me from the desk.”
“Martha retires next month,” Clara said.
“How long have you lived four miles from the hardware store?”
“Six years,” she said.
“Our parents come to town on Tuesdays.”
“They go to the farmers market on Walnut Street,” Clara said.
“They do not buy anything.”
“Why did you leave the car?”
“The steering column was hot,” she said.
“The keys were in the ignition.”
“The police report said there was nothing left in the seats.”
“The fire department used the old chemicals,” Clara said.
“They burned hot enough to melt the badges.”
“Mom cried for a year,” I said.
“Mom bought a new rug every spring,” Clara said.
“That was her way of keeping track.”
“Who signed the dental form last week?”
“The dentist does not ask for identification if you pay in cash,” she said.
“Whose cash?”
“An envelope left behind the post office box,” Clara said.
“Every month on the twelfth.”
“Dad’s handwriting?”
“The numbers are slanted,” Clara said.
“He always wrote his sevens without the crossbar.”
“I have the photo album from the shelf in the hall.”
“The spine is blue,” Clara said.
“The third page has a corner torn off.”
“You remember that?”
“I tore it off so we could split the picture of the dog,” Clara said.
“You kept the head and I kept the tail.”
“I still have the head in my desk drawer,” I said.
“Put it back before they check,” she said.
“Check what?”
“The house,” Clara said.
“They have the spare key behind the garden hose.”
“I am not going back to the kitchen,” I said.
“You have coffee cups in the sink,” she said.
“Two of them.”
“One is yours,” I said.
“The blue one.”
“You always left the handle facing left,” Clara said.
“So I would not knock it over with my elbow.”
“When did you get the filling on the left side?”
“October,” Clara said.
“Before the cold weather started.”
“The dentist mentioned your chart was twenty years old.”
“They kept the paper files in the basement,” Clara said.
“The flood in ninety-eight ruined the rest.”
“Did anyone else know you were here?”
“The mechanic down the street,” Clara said.
“Arthur?”
“He checked the brakes on my truck,” she said.
“He did not ask about my name.”
“Arthur knows everything that happens on the highway.”
“Arthur was there the night we pushed the tractor into the pond,” Clara said.
“That was twenty years ago.”
“Arthur remembers the mud,” she said.
“What did our parents tell you on the phone?”
“They did not call,” Clara said.
“They sent a letter through the laundry service.”
“What did the letter say?”
“It said the town was small enough to hide in if I stayed off the main road,” Clara said.
“Why did you come out today?”
“My tooth cracked on a walnut shell,” she said.
“Martha uses the old scheduling book.”
