A Life for a Life

The full moon is setting over Lucie Cordova’s last closing shift. She imagines it will come as a shock, the general manager sleepwalking through the doors to find the stools still stacked, bar towels unwashed, cash drawer unbalanced. He will call her phone, that vein in his neck popping as he stomps into the kitchen, spies the cracked freezer, another affront added to the list.

Her phone will ring again and again, the drum of vibration growing louder from the heart of the icy pit until he pulls open the door, recoils away from the blood, coughs on the bile rising in his throat.

She almost wishes she could see it, his face betraying something other than anger. A novelty. But she will be tiptoeing the edge of that other world by then, the one that’s held her sister captive for 1096 days. Three years to the day.

Anniversary blues. An affectionate name for the bleak nothingness that dragged her down every April since that rain-soaked night, stored away in flashes of still frame. Fists pounded on pavement. A tangle of blonde hair caught in the zipper of a body bag. Echoes of sirens woven into nightmares that would follow her for years to come. Empty promises from clueless people about time and fading pain.

Lucie tugs the box loose from the pantry floor, dust-covered and lined with the major players of the night. A little orange bottle to keep the panic at bay. A scrap of cloth, the show jumping t-shirt her sister had worn to rags, wrapped around the star of the show. She trails her fingers along it, cold metal burning through the thin fabric.

“What’s that thing they say about losing your head if it wasn’t attached? I wish I could blame it on the chemo, but my mother would have scoffed at the suggestion.”

Lucie jolts upward, dropping the box and smacking her head on the shelf above. Hastily shoving it from view, she hurries back to the bar, rubbing her forehead.

“Ruby,” she says, forcing a smile as she takes in the wrinkled scowl of her favorite regular, bony shoulders poking through her crimson shawl. Ruby searches the countertop and disappears from view.

“There you are, you son of a—” She rights herself, slamming an ancient cell phone face down on the bar and slumping into a bar stool. “Any chance you got another scotch and soda back there?”

“Bar’s closed,” Lucie says, heart still thumping wildly in her throat.

“Since when has that stopped you? If it’s that asshole boss of yours again, I’d be happy to—”

“Give him a piece of your mind?” Lucie asks, a feeble smile lifting the corners of her lips.

“I was gonna say pull the cancer card on him. Dying woman’s last wish and all.”

“You’ve been dying for a year and a half, Rube. Eventually he’s gonna catch on.”

Ruby goes quiet, tugging at a loose thread on her shawl, silence stretching uncomfortably between them. Lucie glances back toward the pantry, swallowing hard, but Ruby is not looking at her. She’s wearing a dull expression, the kind that only comes with bad news.

“You aren’t actually—”

“Terminal. Saw that one coming. We’re stopping treatment,” Ruby interrupts, the words spilling out. Lucie wonders if she’s the first person Ruby told, the only person she had to tell. Her eyes find the pantry again, and her stomach twists. Sighing heavily, Lucie tugs a glass from beneath the bar and places it under the tap.

“Between us,” Lucie says, setting the glass in front of Ruby, who takes a greedy sip. She pauses, raising a teasing eyebrow at Lucie.

“You’re not going to make an old lady drink alone, are you?”

Lucie opens her mouth, the usual protest halfway formed on her tongue when she remembers that little orange bottle, the fate that lies on the other side of Ruby’s departure. One last drink won’t make the bullet any less deadly, but it might set Ruby’s mind at ease when the news breaks along with the dawn. Lucie knows the price of “what ifs”.

She pours amber liquid into a shot glass and downs it in one gulp, then looks up, expecting to see an amused grin on the older woman’s face. Instead, she finds narrowed eyes and a frown. Ruby reaches out to drum her fingers along the ink lining Lucie’s arm, an old game of theirs, tracing her way through the sleeve until Lucie had identified the source of all but one. Lucie already knows where her fingers will land when they find the crook of her elbow.

“Horseshoe?”

“I used to be a show jumper,” Lucie says, her tone clipped. Ruby tilts her head, tapping the date shadowed beneath it. The silence settles uncomfortably between them until Lucie pulls her arm backward, clearing her throat. “It’s for my sister. She...”

The words warp as they crawl up her throat, the perpetual lump deepening as she tries to force herself to say it. She can’t, not tonight, but she doesn’t have to. Ruby watches her with a knowing expression. Perhaps there’s a sixth sense between the dying and the soon-to-be.

“It’s a cruel thing. Being taken before your time. Even crueler on the ones left behind, I think,” Ruby says. “I know it myself. Not a sister, but as good as.” Lucie shrinks back from the words.

“I was cursed with god-awful family. Took off the second I turned eighteen and haven’t heard a word from them since. Back then, I thought I was meant to be on my own. It was all I knew, until I met Nadine.” Ruby trails a flimsy nail along her palm, lost in the memory. “Lord knows we had our differences, but she was the only real friend I had. And then that jeep came along, and it was like she’d never been there at all.”

Lucie swallows hard, the world spinning around her. She clutches the underside of the bar and steadies herself, digging her nails in deep.

“How did you,” Lucie starts, but she can’t get the sentence out.

“You gonna ask how I got through it? I almost didn’t,” Ruby grumbles. Lucie flicks her eyes to Ruby’s face, searching it.

“I was angry. Angry with the world. Angry with Nadine if you believe it. Leaving me alone when she swore she never would. It didn’t make sense, and I wanted no part of a world so senselessly cruel,” Ruby continues. “All I wanted was an escape from the pain.” Lucie glances toward the pantry, the leaden feeling sinking lower in the pit of her stomach.

“Did you find one?”

“I thought I had,” Ruby says, shifting in her seat. She draws the dwindling scotch and soda closer, toying with the straw. There’s a stiffness in her stance, the story drawing out something unwelcome within her. “Dead man’s drop.”

The words plunge into Lucie’s chest. She audibly gasps, but Ruby tumbles onward, unraveling like a loose thread.

“I’d heard the legends. Grief-stricken loved ones pleading for the city to install a guardrail. Anything at all to safety net the makeshift burial site. But that day it glowed in the moonlight like a vacancy sign.”

Lucie can’t listen anymore, each word punctuated by flashback, the draw of the pantry stronger by the second. She wants Ruby to stop, to leave, to let the events of the night run their course.

“I swear she was there with me, hand closing around my wrist as that car barreled toward the point of no return.”

“Ruby—”

“Maybe it was her. Maybe it was survival instinct. Something primal took over, spinning the wheel, back tires skittering over the edge, catching road again as I spun around that switchback.”

“Ruby, please—”

“Something was wrong. Alarm bells exploding behind my eyes, something missed. I chalked it up to adrenaline. I was shaking bad enough.”

“Please stop—"

“But that’s when I saw her.”

The protest bleeds out of Lucie alongside the color in her face, the story taking familiar shape. She recoils backward, but Ruby is staring into her glass, the glittering contents swirling like a crystal ball.

“At last, the sirens had a face. A beautiful, angelic face. Blonde hair hanging in tendrils around it, a single teardrop of blood dripping from the corner of her mouth.” Ruby finally looks up, eyes glistening. She reaches out to touch Lucie, but Lucie stumbles away from her, knocking into the bottles lining the wall. One topples, and Lucie lets it fall to the ground. She flinches at the shatter, cool liquid pooling around her sneakers.

“I’ve been there a thousand times since, each dream as vivid as the first nightmare. Every time it’s the same. Frozen behind my eyes as I walk away from her, kicking up dust on her still-breathing frame. Was she breathing? That’s what haunts me most. Would it make a difference either way?”

Ruby collapses into monologue, the words a gentle reassurance to buried parts of herself, but Lucie cannot hear them anymore. She blinks and she’s there again, staring down into her sister’s vacant expression, zipper pulled tight over the world she thought she knew.

“A life for a life. That’s the price I paid. And I’ve been paying it every day since.” Ruby looks up, her gaze trailing past Lucie to the mirrored backdrop of the bar wall, lip curling at the weathered face staring back.

“You left her there.”

“I’d do anything to erase that day, go to hell and back to never round that horseshoe bend,” Ruby says. Lucie absentmindedly touches the crook of her elbow. The memories are coming hot and fast. The somber expressions, the crosswalk sign hovering over the body like a sardonic headstone. “It was my fault, Lucie. Not yours.”

“Don’t—”

“My fault your sister is dead,” Ruby says. Lucie digs her nails into her upper thigh and slides down the bar, sinking into the sticky liquid. Heat and ice battle for dominance as the nausea rolls over her. “Me who you should be punishing.”

Lucie looks up into those prematurely lined eyes peering over the edge of the bar. She lets herself imagine it. Stomping toward the pantry, tugging the box loose. The unfamiliar weight in her hand. The bang like a gavel, justice finally served.

Her stomach twists at the thought, and she shakes it off. There is only one killer in this room.

“Why did you come here?” Lucie croaks, clutching at her chest. Their history is pooling around her, littered with broken glass like the liquid beneath her. Ruby weaving herself into Lucie’s world, gaining her sympathy, her empathy. A lie. A manipulation.

“Because I wrote the script of life after loss. And I didn’t want you to get my ending.” The screeching grind of metal on tile fills the air, soft footfalls padding around the bar. Her gait is slow and labored, hampered by the crawl of disease, the curse of time, the weight of regret. She kneels, plucking chunks of glass from the ground.

“I wanted you to put a face to the blame. The end is coming for me either way,”

Lucie looks up. This is Ruby’s reckoning. Lucie’s too. She imagines more flashing lights, handcuffs slipping over the skeletal wrists of her once-favorite patron. Shoulder blades poking through an orange jumpsuit as she burns out the last of her days behind bars. Her fate handed over with a wrapped bow.

The decision is too big, bearing down on Lucie like a cross. One last shining opportunity for salvation or damnation. The thought freezes her. One last.

She looks up at Ruby, the olive branch cast between them at the cost of her final months on Earth. There’s knowing in the woman’s eyes, the same knowing that catches in Lucie’s throat.

Ruby has given her a choice to make when she thought she had no choices left. A life for a life.