"I cannot understand why you should wish to leave Omaha and go back to Des Moines." Then again, these days I can understand much. The words fell before they reached her and bounced on the floor like a bucket of steel shot. She hadn't even so much as jerked her head. That's her way, I've learned. I'm the ghost, maybe a quivering shadow out of the corner of her eye or an apparition that appears the moment her head is turned. A meth-fiend dream, easily written off as too much or little serotonin. She did it intentionally. That's her way. This time she'd milled around my apartment for three days, half-naked mostly, appearing when I was at my weakest. The clock drumming lonely seconds off the kitchen tile or the street lamp seizing
