The Cover Age, Chapter 24 (Conclusion)

She didn’t tell him, at first, out of kindness, which surprised her. She thought she no longer had room in her heart for him, and then she began to realize that wasn’t true, that she was actually starting to miss him.

She didn’t tell him, after a few days, because then she would feel like a monster for having withheld it earlier.

When a week had passed, when it was well past the point, in ordinary times, for their daughter to once again pass between homes, and she knew he’d be thinking about it, she nearly picked up the phone.

But she allowed life to continue getting in the way.

She still needed money. No job. Only grief keeping her company. She started looking around. So many jobs, like hers, now vacated, but some were merely vacant.

She took it because it was available. She’d never worked a job like it before, had never even considered side hustles like Uber, even when everyone was doing it. At first it was weird. Weird enough that she was hired so quickly, so easily. Desperate times all around.

Then came the fateful day. He never even looked at her. As they had become to each other, she was completely invisible to him. He was traveling with some lady. Wait, she recognized her! She told herself it didn’t matter. She told herself she didn’t care.

She kept telling herself all sorts of things.

Then they got off. They seem to have arranged a meeting with a strange individual in a fancy coat. Then it happened.

Georgia almost let out a scream. Clive lay bleeding out, and the lady and the strange man stood around talking as if everything were completely normal.

It wasn’t. Nothing was normal. Nothing would be normal again. She closed the doors of the bus and drove off. No more passengers. There was one, a teenager smoking at the stop, but Georgia kept driving. She saw the look of apathy on his face, as if to say, “I expected no better. Don’t even know what I was thinking.”

Later, at the station, she sat quietly in the employee lounge. Then she screamed. Then she went home. And waited for the pandemic to end.