She went back to the bedroom. There was nothing left of the body on the floor but a stain on the carpet and a few old bones tangled up in a dressing down. She kicked them out of the way. She stripped her ruined, bloodstained clothes off and then went to her closet, but found nothing in there that appealed to her. She fingered the fabric of the pleated dresses, shaking her head. She went to the parlor instead.
There she found the other body, crushed and withered. She sighed to see it. She thought she was crying, but found she was not, and then found she couldn’t. This gave her pause, but she pushed it aside. She picked the body up and looked it over; it was about right. There was blood only on the undershirt. She stripped the corpse and dressed herself in its clothes. In the pocket of the leather jacket she found keys to the motorcycle. She jingled them as she walked downstairs (hand sliding, one last time, over the familiar banister), the black boots on her feet making a heavy sound with each step.
Mary paused at the front door, looking back. She no longer cast a reflection in any of the windows, but she thought she saw, dimly, the reflected images of two women, and now of a man too, and also of something that might have been a little girl, with blond curls and a pleated dress. Who was that? She looked so familiar…
But then they were gone.
She found the motorcycle parked in the alley, caressing the black steel frame before swinging one leg over it, straddling the machine and feeling it roar to life under her. It responded to her every touch, and it felt good. She sped away from the house, and the reflections, and the memories, off into the night. She had no idea where she was going, or what she would do when she got there, but it didn’t matter.
The night was young, after all.