Copyright © 2013 William Conescu
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conescu, William.
Kara Was Here : a novel / William Conescu.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grief—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Ghost Stories—Fiction. 4. Mystery fiction. gsafd I. Title.
PS3603.O533K37 2013
813’.6—dc23
2013017681
ISBN 978-1-59376-573-6
Cover design by Debbie Berne
Interior design by Elyse Strongin, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.
Soft Skull Press
An Imprint of Counterpoint
1919 Fifth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
With love to
Austin and Nathan
CONTENTS
LATELY, BRAD MITCHELL’S WORLD SEEMED TO BE SPLITTING IN TWO. THE GREEN minivan on the highway in front of him sped along atop the ghost of itself. Brad could see a hazy outline hovering on either side of it. Only if he concentrated, really focused on the minivan, was he able to fuse its overlapping images together. The traffic signs were more difficult to control—signs announcing a gas station ahead, thirty-seven miles to Wilmington, exit 380 to Rose Hill. They emerged in the distance in adjacent pairs that began to overlap as they grew closer, until each sign passed through Brad’s peripheral vision with a halo surrounding it, like a memory of the sign superimposed on the present.
He hoped it was still safe for him to drive. It probably was, he said to himself for the tenth time that morning. Highway driving wasn’t difficult, plus it was light outside. Lord knows you drove in worse condition when we were together, he could hear Kara saying.
A dozen years ago, sure. But the questionable vision made more sense back then.
If it makes you feel any better, I think you drove better stoned than I did, she might have told him.
The words were like a shameful soundtrack to years he never discussed anymore.
“But today—” he started to say aloud. Then he stopped himself. Today he was just seeing the world the way it had started to appear. And today he was en route to Kara Tinsley’s funeral.
Brad had driven this stretch of I-40 on many spring mornings like this one. Since he and Val had gotten married five years ago, they’d been heading to the beach every year as soon as she’d turned in grades, and back when he was at UNC, he and Kara would often escape from Chapel Hill to the North Carolina coast—for spring break, or to do laundry at her mother’s house, or to avoid a midterm. As far as Brad could recall, this was his first time driving this route without anyone beside him singing or fussing with the radio or insisting on a stop at a convenience store. He’d probably stopped at half of the gas stations he was now passing, so he and Val could buy sodas and the most complicated scratch-off lottery tickets they could find, or so he and Kara could stock up on cigarettes and Boone’s Farm. Strawberry Hill: seven and a half percent alcohol. Wild Island: only five percent. Choose wisely, she would say.
He had. When she turned twenty-four and moved to New York to pursue celebrity on the stage, he stayed behind in their apartment in Chapel Hill. For a year, he got more acting work in North Carolina than she did in New York, though it wasn’t as if he rubbed her nose in it. Eventually, he ended up with a realtor’s license and a beautiful wife who appreciated his attempts at making brunch. Kara ended up dead on a couch in Brooklyn. The call came the night before last.
Maybe he should have anticipated getting a call like this one day: news of an overdose, a car crash, alcohol poisoning. But why brace yourself for all the things you hope will never happen? Was that supposed to make the news go down easier? It didn’t seem likely.
An eighteen-wheeler sped past, edging into Brad’s lane—it was not an optical illusion—and as Brad shifted his Civic from the center to the right lane, he allowed himself to wonder once again if he shouldn’t have driven. It could be unsafe. But then again, the doctor had said it was probably nothing. And besides, Brad had been driving all week. He’d driven the week before. He was fine. It was daytime, this wasn’t dangerous. It was nothing, he told himself. Just focus on the road.
A mileage sign announced that Brad was only twenty-two miles away from Greenwood Park, maybe twenty-four from her body. And it was only the white border of the sign that seemed to sit, transparent, beside its double.
Brad’s yoga instructor had once said that mindfulness was the best way to combat anxiety, but these days, when Brad followed her advice, when he stayed in the moment and paid attention to the world around him, more often than not he saw two worlds. His moments had extra stoplights and two refrigerator handles superimposed on one another. Distant trees split like amoebas when Brad tried to be mindful of any one of them. At the gym, the lines of the machines wavered in and out of double as he crossed the room. Thresholds were becoming wider than they used to be, and making eye contact at the dinner table required choosing one of his wife’s four eyes to hold