When I gave birth to Jamie, one of my wrists was shackled to the bed in the infirmary at Happy Valley. I strained against the chain as the contractions thundered through me, feeling something like a wild pig in a pen waiting for slaughter, trying to break free. I got to hold my child for an hour before the social worker came. I didn’t feel anything in that moment, handing him over.
Looking down at Jamie on my chest in the room in which I’d birthed him, I’d thought how beautiful he was, how appropriate it was that this perfect little thing should be on his way out of the ugliness of that institution in only moments. I hadn’t been sad for me. I’d been relieved for him.
The deliberate peeling away from the present I’d been doing from the moment my fate was sealed meant I spent the next few months swimming in a fantasy of my own creation. The other inmates had little to do with me. I was generally considered too ‘spaced out’ to bother with. I lay silently on my bed most days, dreaming my incarcerated sisters and I had been abducted from Earth by aliens, and the prison was a kind of holding facility for humans under observation by the extraterrestrial overlords. I’d given up my baby so that he could go back to Earth, where it was safe.
I didn’t see Jamie in person for the first nine years of his life. It had been a necessary choice for me. The decision meant I didn’t have to watch him grow up behind glass, and that I could imagine him romping around the green fields of the Earth in my imagination, carefree and joyous under endless blue skies. He would be untouched by my imprisonment when I was finally released, a perfect boy, ready to welcome me as his mom, his only living kindred spirit. We would continue on the plan I’d made for us before the murder.
It had been a good plan. Measured and calculated, almost clinical. My relentless pursuit of my career after med school had meant I’d fallen into a pattern of casual dalliances with men – usually other doctors, who were as neurotic about their careers as I was. I’d had no desire to get serious about finding a man when I realised I wanted to be a mother. Signing up for a sperm donor hadn’t been weird. I’d had a vision for Jamie and myself, the son that wanted for nothing and the mom who would make him proud. Until I was released, all I had to do was survive. Things would resume like a play after an intermission when I finally came home to my son.
But now a year had passed since I was released, and our lives were not nearing the ridiculous ideal I’d constructed at all. Jamie loved his foster mother and father, friends from my former life, and he was awkward at best and scared at worst with me. I’d stayed out of his life to protect myself, but in doing so I’d landed him with a mother he didn’t know but was forced to make space for in his already confusing and tumultuous young world.
As I lifted my hand to knock on the door of Jamie’s house, I heard the boy somewhere inside the spacious home, his voice a high whine. ‘. . . want to go to Benny’s house! It’s not fair! Everyone is going except me!’
‘There will be other parties, Jamie. This is more important.’
‘It’s not important! It’s stupid!’
I knocked, swallowing hard. Sasha opened the door, wearing a paisley apron. Perfect bangs. She was that kind of housewife, the kind who ran a blog where she taught people how to make cookies in the shape of action heroes and cartoon characters. Something was baking in the house somewhere, the scent of cinnamon and vanilla wafting out the door. Jamie was in the hall, his face dark with dread.
‘Hello, buddy!’ I said, smiling.
‘Hey.’ He sighed and wandered off.
‘Someone’s having a little tantrum this morning.’ Sasha hugged me with one arm, made a mwah noise next to my ear. ‘It’ll wear off. There’s a party down the street and he wants to go, but a boy needs to hang out with his mother.’
I was the ‘mother’ and Sasha was the ‘mom’. I didn’t like it but I didn’t have the right, or the power, to change it, and Sasha had been good about leaving Jamie’s surname as Harbour, as I’d requested. Sasha had raised Jamie since he was an infant. She and her husband had unquestioningly accepted my baby so that he didn’t fall into the hands of strangers in foster care, strangers who might adopt him and insist I never saw him again. Accepting that I was Jamie’s mother, but that he would call me ‘Blair’, was just one of a million heartaches I’d had to face following the moment I pulled the trigger of a gun and took a man’s life. You don’t tell your mother you love them, or confide your secrets in her, or go to her for help. That stuff belongs to the mom. I followed Sasha into the high-ceilinged home, looking for my son, my chest tight with the anticipation of holding him.
‘Jamie, we can drop in to the party if you want,’ I said, finding him slumped on a leather couch. ‘Let’s go get ice cream and then pay a visit on the way back.’
‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘All the good food will be gone by then, probably.’
‘That’s your last “whatever”.’ Sasha pointed the finger of doom at the boy. ‘You get one per day and you’ve just used it, Bucko. Now get up and hug Blair, then get your stuff. And if I find a Nintendo Switch in your pocket when you come back out here I’m going to put it in the lock-up.’
The ‘lock-up’ was Sasha’s underwear drawer, a place for overused electronics and confiscated forbidden magazines. I received an awkward hug from Jamie and then stood, face burning, while Sasha saw to her Iron Man cookies in the huge kitchen.
‘Oh my god,’ she said suddenly, while adjusting the temperature on the high-tech oven. ‘You’ll never believe this. I’ve been clearing out some old stuff from the basement. I found some photos of us.’ She pointed with an oven mitt to a stack on the counter. ‘Such a blast from the past.’
I went to the stack of photos and looked through them. Pool party shots. Some extravagant drunken gathering or another. Brentwood society ladies liked expensive white wine and deep, devastating conversations poolside while the children played, and we’d find any excuse to do it. Someone’s promotion. A kid’s graduation. A marriage, a divorce. We’d had a party for a dog’s birthday once. I spotted myself at Sasha’s side in the cabana in her yard, laughing, drinking sparkling water with lemon, my baby bump hardly showing. I tried to guess how many days passed between the taking of the photograph and the night I murdered a man. Maybe two months. I put the photos down.
‘Look at my hair.’ She leaned over. ‘Crazy, right?’
‘I need to talk to you,’ I said.
‘What about?’
‘I was robbed two nights ago.’ I glanced at the hallway to make sure Jamie was out of earshot. ‘They got my car and all my cash. Every cent. I snuck onto a bus to get here.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Sasha jerked away, as though from an offensive odour. ‘How is that even possible?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Blair,’ she sighed. ‘Honestly. This is not the kind of behaviour that fills me with confidence about you getting more one-on-one time with Jamie.’
‘Maybe you didn’t hear me correctly,’ I said carefully. ‘I was robbed. It’s not my behaviour we’re talking about.’
‘You’re the one who insists on living in the badlands,’ Sasha said, waving in the general direction of the south-east. ‘I’ve told you before, someone up here would let you live in their guest house, where it’s safe. I could make some calls.’
‘Accommodation is great but I’ve got to eat. No one within miles of here would hire me.’
‘They’d hire you in the house, Blair.’ Sasha rolled her eyes. ‘It would have to be someone I knew, but I could swing it.’
‘That sounds hellish for me,’ I said. ‘And you. What are you going to say? “This is my murderous ex-con friend, mother of my child. Will you have her as live-in help? It might be dangerous, but imagine how fun it will it be, staring at her and whispering about her while she brings us drinks.”’
‘So what do you need?’ She looked me over. ‘Cash and to borrow the car to take Jamie to the pier, I suppose.’
‘I can pay you back in a couple of weeks.’
‘It’s fine. I’ll have to tell Henry something. Perhaps I won’t mention the robbery. We need to make a time to discuss the custody arrangement and I don’t know how something like this will sound to him,’ she said, going to her handbag, on a chair by the windows. She started extracting notes from her pocketbook. ‘He’s hardly ever here at the moment anyway. Work has got him run ragged.’
A sparkle of terror hit my brain. The ‘talk’ Sasha was going to have with Henry, about my having shared custody of Jamie, had been mentioned but not executed three times already. I wondered if this was going to blow it all out of the water. I wasn’t asking for fifty-fifty. I just wanted days, not hours, with my son. I’d met all my parole conditions. I was being visited and interviewed once a month by Child Protective Services agents, two prim and stiff-backed women who sat together on my couch and looked down their noses at my scuffed second-hand coffee table and the worn industrial carpet in my apartment. I was doing everything I could.
I pushed down the ache in my chest as the boy re-emerged from his bedroom, a smile full of effort and strain on his face. Sasha gave him the Nintendo pat-down and kissed him goodbye.
‘Let’s go!’ I chirped, like a cartoon adventurer about to set off on a treacherous mountain climb. I squeezed his shoulder on the way to the door, maybe too hard.
The Santa Monica Pier Ferris wheel carriages swung gently as the machinery clunked between stops. Jamie bumped into me at one of the intervals, shifted by the movement of the carriage, and then slid across the seat away from me, awkward. It always took him a long time to warm up.
‘So, what’s so great about this Benny kid and his party?’ I asked.
‘Someone said they were going to have a magician,’ Jamie said. ‘Or an acrobat. I don’t know. Me and the guys have been trying to learn how to do backflips and I thought he might teach us.’
‘I like how you say “me and the guys” like you’re a bunch of twenty-year-olds.’
‘We’re kind of half twenty-year-olds,’ he mused.
‘I knew a chick in prison who could do backflips,’ I said. ‘She could do a handstand on one hand too.’
‘Why was she in prison if she was so cool?’
‘Drugs. Theft,’ I said. ‘In fact, I saw her yesterday morning, out of the blue.’ I shoved away the sudden wave of anxiety that rose at the thought of Sneak and her child. ‘Hey, guess what?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘I love you with all my heart and soul.’
‘Oh, god.’ He clapped a hand over his eyes. ‘You’ve said that, like, a million times before, you know that?’
The sun was sparkling in Jamie’s hair. I wanted to stroke it so badly that I had to turn away.
‘What was your jail friend visiting for?’ he asked. ‘Was she just saying hello? Do you ever, like, hang out with all the people you knew in there?’
‘No. Actually, we’re not allowed to hang out.’
‘Well, that’s pretty stupid.’
‘It’s the law,’ I said. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Were there any other murderers in jail or was it just you?’
I flinched at the question.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘There were plenty.’
‘I didn’t know girls could be murderers before Mom told me about you.’
‘They can.’
‘Were they scary? The ones in prison?’
‘Some of them were,’ I said. ‘Most of them were just like me. I’m not scary.’ I waited for a response. There was none. ‘Am I?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Nah,’ he replied eventually. I took a chance and patted the back of his head.
‘So, get this,’ he said suddenly. ‘We’ve got a new neighbour at our house.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘At the back. I met her last night.’
‘You like her?’
‘She seems pretty cool,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But she smokes a lot. Smoking’s bad for you. Gives you cancer. That’s what happened to Mr Beauvoir. He got cancer. Maybe everybody who moves in to that house will smoke and get cancer and die.’
I watched my child, wondering how he could turn something as exciting as the arrival of a friendly new neighbour into something so dark. I supposed it seemed to Jamie as though there was murder and unexpected death all around him, stories of it happening in a past he was not a part of, events that permeated his present reality. No matter what I did, I would not be able to protect Jamie from what I had done while he was curled, unborn, inside my body. I fiddled with my phone, and a desire to indulge my addiction rose and fell. I thought about Dayly’s blood on the wall of her apartment, the upturned chair. I saw the desperate young woman behind the gun in the Pump’n’Jump, the way her arm shook with a terror that radiated from deep within. Sneak’s child, out there somewhere, dead or alive.
Our carriage was almost at the bottom of the wheel. ‘Can we get ice cream now?’ Jamie asked.
‘Anything you want,’ I told him.
It was about three weeks after I gave birth to Jamie in the prison infirmary. The hazy, dense mental fugue I’d fallen into, complete with alien overlords and space battles for Earth, had complete control of my waking minutes. I was lying on my bed looking at nothing when she came by.
‘Bitch,’ she said, putting an elbow on the bed beside me, leaning in. ‘I gotta ask you. How long you planning to lie there pretending you’re dead?’
I blinked myself back into reality, looked at her.
‘Leave me alone,’ I said.
‘No way. You know why?’ She turned and pointed. ‘Because that’s my bunk over there. The one in the corner. I sleep on my left side, which means every morning and every night for the past month I’ve gone to sleep and woken up looking at your bugged-out, drooling face. I’m tired of it. It’s bothering me. It’s offending me now. If slapping the shit out of you is going to bring you back to earth, I’ll do it.’
‘Go ahead,’ I said.
She leaned in closer. ‘Here’s what you need to understand,’ she said. ‘We’re all sad in here. We’re all angry. You think you’re the only one who’s ever had to give up a baby in this place? There was a crazy woman in here last summer who had to sleep with a doll. Not just sleep with it but carry it around everywhere, pretending to go off and breastfeed it, talking to it and changing its diapers. You think you’re the only one who’s ever had to stare down the barrel of a decade or more in this shithole? You’re trippin’. We’re all in this together, and you lying there cracking up is going to start making other people wonder if they shouldn’t be doing the same. We all get through it or none of us get through it, you understand? Weren’t you a doctor? Didn’t I hear that?’
‘Yeah,’ I muttered.
‘So you’re supposed to be all about helping everyone else,’ she said. ‘Snap to it, bitch.’
I thought about Sneak’s words as I led my son into the police station.
‘What are we doing?’ Jamie asked as we entered the dull brick building. ‘Is this where you went to jail?’
I hushed him. It was, in fact, the police station I had been escorted to on the night of the murder. But it was the only station I knew, and I had to act while I had use of Sasha’s car.
‘We’re just making a quick report.’
The boy looked around excitedly at the framed pictures of police, collections of badges and the polished brass trophies from police sporting events in a big cabinet before the brick wall. The smell of the place was the same as the night I had been brought here. Leather, gun oil, trouble, pride.
The thin male officer behind the front desk was clicking idly at a computer. ‘Yep,’ he said by way of address.
‘Hi.’ I put my sweaty hands on the counter. ‘I’m here to report a stolen car.’
The officer sighed and began leafing through sheets of paper on a shelf below the counter. He set a form in front of me.
‘Fill that out.’
I filled out the form. The officer took it, signed it, and slipped it behind the desk, somewhere I couldn’t see, probably onto an enormous pile.
‘I’m also . . . uh.’ I stared at my hands on the counter, thinking, deciding. ‘Yeah. I’m here to see if a missing person report has been filed.’
‘You’re here to file a missing person report?’ He frowned.
‘No.’ I swallowed. ‘I’m here to see if one has been filed. I . . . I’m trying to find out . . . If one hasn’t been filed, you see, I may want to file one. Or have someone come here and file one. If that’s okay. The girl . . . I’m hoping her roommate might have, uh . . .’
The officer stared at me. His badge said McAuley.
‘Could you please just see if a missing person report has been filed for Dayly Lawlor?’ I said. Sweat was rolling down my ribs. I flapped my shirt away from my skin. ‘L-a-w-l-o-r. I don’t know if it’s “Daily” like every day, or otherwise.’
McAuley looked over my shoulder at Jamie and then back at me. There was a deadness in his eyes that didn’t lift as he turned to the computer and started typing. He ran a finger down a list of names that was laminated and taped to the desk, then picked up a phone and dialled. The officer said ‘Front desk’, and then replaced the receiver.
I stood, hoping whoever was being called to the front desk had nothing to do with me. That McAuley would return to the computer, check for Dayly, confirm that she wasn’t my problem and let me go. But a man in plain clothes appeared through a door beside the counter and looked right at me.
He glanced at Jamie then beckoned me sharply with one hand. ‘You can leave the boy where he is.’
Hallways, corners, sudden vast offices full of cubicles, eyes, posters, racks of uniform hats. I was tracing steps that I had taken ten years earlier, each one taking me further and further away from my child. I was inside. An interview room door was shutting behind us. An air-sucking sound.
I realised I hadn’t looked at the man before me. Like the well-trained inmate that I had once been, I’d focused only on his shoes. Brown leather boots, worn, scuffed, under jeans. I caught a glimpse of a neat blond buzz cut and a questioning look. Heavy, stubbled jaw. I turned away.
‘Sit.’ He gestured to a chair. There was no table in the room to hide behind. I sat, clasped my hands, and he sank into the other chair.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he began.
‘What? Nothing.’
He stared at me.
‘Nothing.’ I straightened. ‘I was just here to check on a report.’
‘You’re nervous.’
‘Police stations make everybody nervous.’
‘Your name,’ he said. It wasn’t a request, it was a statement.
‘Blair Harbour.’
The man took out his phone and started typing. I was in too deep. Trying to regulate my breathing, avoid drowning. I struggled in the silence.
‘And yours?’ I asked, just to break it.
‘Detective Al Tasik.’
A detective. I gripped my chair. ‘What division are you in?’ I asked.
More silence. He was in control, an elbow on the arm of his chair, chewing a nail as he surfed the internet or looked at his texts or whatever the hell he was doing. The calm of a person in a doctor’s waiting room. Casual.
‘You’re lying,’ he said finally.
‘What?’ I said again, laughed stupidly. ‘No, I—’
‘You’re Blair Harbour. Killer. Convict. Parolee.’ He showed me the phone screen, a second-long flash of my own face. ‘But you sit down in front of me just now and the first thing you say is you’re nervous because everybody gets nervous in police stations. That’s a lie by omission. When were you going to tell me you’re a convicted criminal?’
‘Look.’ I took a deep breath, swiped a stray hair out of my face before it stuck to the sweat beading at my temples. ‘I’m just here to see if my friend – if a person who I think may be missing – has been reported as such. That’s all.’
‘Dayly Lawlor is your friend?’
My heart was hammering. I wondered if he could see my jugular pulsing. ‘No. I don’t know her.’
‘You just said she was your friend. Are you avoiding saying she’s your friend because she’s a criminal, too? You have particularly strict parole conditions, Ms Harbour. I’m sure you’ve been made aware of those. They specifically state that interactions with anyone who has been convicted of a—’
‘I know,’ I said. I needed to take back control of the conversation. Interrupt him. He didn’t like it. His jaw twitched.
‘When was the last time you saw Ms Lawlor?’
The Pump’n’Jump. The gun in her hand. The blood on her fingers.
‘I’ve never seen her,’ I said. ‘I’m telling you Dayly Lawlor is not a friend. I’ve never met her. She’s related to someone I know.’
‘Someone you know? Who?’
‘Just a person.’
‘Tell me their name.’
‘I don’t have to do that.’
‘So you’re just here checking on the missing person report of someone you don’t know and have never met.’ He nodded slowly, smirked at an empty corner of the room as though he was so used to sharing a smirk with his partner that he did it even when they weren’t there. ‘Ms Harbour, I’m going to ask you now, are you currently under the influence of any drugs?’
My mind leaped ahead, sizzled and snapped through a series of horrific visions. A drug test. A formal interview while we waited for results. A call to my parole officer. A call to Sasha and Henry from McAuley at the front desk, telling them to come get Jamie, that I was going to be detained for an undetermined amount of time due to a sudden unfolding of circumstances on which he could not elaborate. The thought pressed again that the only person who was going to get me out of this room was myself. The way I had got myself out from under the gaze of the robber’s gun two days earlier, the way I had talked and schemed and lied my way out of rapes, assaults and shankings in prison a million times across the decade I had been inside.
Take back control.
‘I’m leaving now.’ I stood up.
‘No, you’re not.’
The man had me before I saw him move. He was out of his chair, his hard hand twisting my right forearm and locking it into my back. I smacked against the cold concrete wall, my head, my ribs, my hips. We stopped. His hands were on my wrist and my shoulder. Our breaths were hard. That was something to focus on. That was a clue. Hot breath. Agitated. Why was he agitated? I waited to be read my rights, but he said nothing.
Because he was thinking.
I realised I had a chance. ‘I want my lawyer,’ I said.
‘You don’t—’
‘Lawyer, lawyer, lawyer,’ I said. ‘Now. Right now.’
‘You don’t need a fucking lawyer.’ He pulled my wrist away and shoved my hand into the wall, then lifted my other arm and flung it upwards. ‘I’m going to conduct a routine body search for weapons or other restricted items.’
I closed my eyes, held the wall and prepared to be briefly sexually assaulted. The camera was on us, but I was sure he’d do as the guards in Happy Valley had done more times than I could remember – reach too high, too deep, linger for too long. He didn’t. The man swept his hands over my clothes and pulled me off the wall, jabbed me in the shoulder to get me to move towards the door.
‘Get going,’ he said.
I walked stiffly back the way we had come. In time I looked behind me and realised he wasn’t following. I walked faster, and hit the door to the foyer at a jog. Jamie was slumped in the chair I had put him in, his Nintendo upright on his chest, thumbs dancing on the buttons. I yanked him up and walked fast with him out of the building towards the car.
‘What happened? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I told him, laughing too loud. ‘Where the hell did you get that Nintendo? Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky. What a sneaky kid.’
‘Are you okay? You’re all red.’
‘It’s hot. We’re just late, that’s all. Gotta get you home or we’ll be in trouble.’
Trouble. I breathed the word, hardly able to give it sound. My head was throbbing, hands shaking as I opened the car door. Wet handprints on the steering wheel. It took me longer than it should have to figure out what I was supposed to do with the keys in my hand, where I’d even got them. Jamie was watching me, the Nintendo playing looping music, bouncing sounds. We sat in silence while I tried to remember how to put the car in reverse.
‘Hey!’ he said in time. I looked over. He was smiling, pointing through the windscreen. I followed his aim and saw Detective Jessica Sanchez walking across the street before us towards her car, her gaze bent to her phone, a thick binder of papers under her arm. The sight of the woman who had arrested me for murder sent a bolt of pain through my chest.
‘That’s her. My new neighbour,’ Jamie said.
I looked at him, then back at Sanchez, who was pulling open the door of her Suzuki, her black hair caught in the hot afternoon wind. I let my hands fall into my lap.
‘Motherfucker,’ I said.
Jamie laughed.
After dropping Jamie off, I walked to a quiet street five minutes from his house and sat down on a low brick wall outside a random property. My fingers were trembling as I tried to dial. I didn’t even look at the numbers, just listened to the tune they played. The phone rang three times as I tried to regulate my breathing.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi.’ I swallowed. My mouth was bone dry. ‘My name is Blair, and I need someone to talk to.’
There was the usual pause. A shuffling sound. ‘Huh? Who is this?’
‘I just want to talk to you for a minute,’ I said. ‘What’s your name? Where are you? What are you doing?’
I already had some of the details I needed. Deep voice. Not old, but it was hard to tell – he hadn’t said much yet. I formed an image of his face quickly. Closed my eyes to see it better. The man sounded as if he was in a quiet, enclosed space. No background noise. A car? His house? An elevator? The possibilities were endless. I could picture him taking his phone from his ear, looking at the screen. Unknown number.
‘Sorry, who is this?’ he insisted.
‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Steve.’
‘Steve,’ I said. ‘I’m Blair. Are you at home right now?’
‘Woman, whatever you’re sellin’, I can tell you I don’t want it.’
‘I’m not selling anything,’ I said. My breaths were slowing. I could see Steve’s face. A kind face. Big hands. I added a ball cap. Blue. Dodgers. ‘I just want to know what you’re doing.’
‘Me?’ he said. ‘I’m waitin’ on somebody.’
‘Who?’
‘I drive Uber. Some guy. Is this Rebecca?’ Sceptical. I could see him narrow his eyes.
‘It’s Blair,’ I said. I wiped my sweaty hand on my jeans. ‘What kind of neighbourhood are you in? How long have you been driving Uber?’
‘A year. What . . . Oh man. What do you want?’
‘I just want to talk.’
‘This is so weird.’ A smile in his voice.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘You just some random chick calling people looking for someone to talk to? About nothin’?’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I do it all the time.’
‘Hell, why?’
‘Because it makes me feel good.’
‘It makes you feel good to know it’s Steve here, sittin’ on his ass in a car outside some goddamn house in the middle of nowhere, waiting for some dumb fuck to come get his ride.’ His voice rose and rose until it cracked with laughter. ‘That’s stupid, girl.’
‘I know,’ I said again. ‘But it’s a thing now. It’s something that I do. And I’m real grateful you answered.’
Steve the Uber driver laughed again and hung up. I closed my eyes and felt the sun on my face, focused on him sitting in his car, watching as his passenger emerged from their house. As always, I inserted the details I needed to latch on to the dream – the passenger’s suitcase rumbling as he wheeled it along the concrete drive outside his meagre home. The smell of Steve’s car, cigarettes behind a wall of hibiscus air freshener. A dancing plastic sunflower on the dash. A scar on Steve’s wrist, old, from a fence nail. In time, my fantasy was as real and vivid as it would have been if I’d been sitting next to Steve in his vehicle. I forgot all about Jamie, Dayly, Sneak, the detective at the police station, the feel of his hard hands running up my thighs, over my shoulders. I sat and watched Steve greeting his passenger, putting his car into drive, adjusting the air conditioning, putting his phone into the holder and tapping the screen to tell the app he had his man.
I’d been dialling random numbers and speaking to strangers for six years. The addiction had started in prison, when Sasha had forgotten to tell me that she and Henry were taking Jamie camping and I’d called their house a hundred times, trying to get an update on my child. The whole weekend I’d called and called, receiving nothing but her calm, authoritative answering message, the prison common room around me swirling and crashing with activity. I’d imagined fires. Home invasions. Sudden fatal accidents, illnesses. I’d imagined Sasha and Henry had taken my child and run off to Australia. I’d dialled a random number by mistake, my finger slipping onto an eight instead of a five. An elderly man’s voice croaked through the receiver. As I’d ached and burned and shaken with terror at the fate of my child, the old man’s confused voice had disrupted the violence my mind was inflicting on my body. He’d never received a call from a correctional facility, he’d said. He was curious to know who I was. We’d talked for fifteen minutes, and my addiction had begun.