40

Harper

When my phone rings, I look at the caller ID on the dash of my car. I see Georgina’s name and my first response is surprise . . . no, shock. Then I wonder if someone has taken her phone from her, or is using it to make a ransom call.

I hit the “receive” button on the dash. “Georgina?” I try not to sound as afraid for her as I am.

“Harper . . . Mom?”

“Oh, Georgina.” I exhale in a long breath, gripping the steering wheel. “Are you all right?” The windshield wipers make a rhythmic sound and it seems as if it takes forever for her to respond.

“I’m all right.” Her voice breaks.

And tears immediately spring to my eyes. “Georgina, thank you for calling me. Thank you for letting us know you’re okay.” My anger that she’s taken off is gone. I’m just so relieved, so thankful to hear her voice. “Did you already talk to your dad?”

“No.” She sniffs.

I can tell she’s trying not to cry, so I try, too.

“I just called you,” she says in the smallest voice.

And my heart is breaking as only a mother’s heart can break for her child in pain.

“Where are you, honey?”

“Could you . . . could Dad . . . could someone come get me? I’m really sorry. I just want to . . .” Her voice trembles. “I’m sorry.”

“Of course I’ll come get you. Where are you?” I repeat. I already know, if the location thingy on my phone is correct. I’ve got my phone mounted on my dash so I could watch her little pulsing dot. It’s been in the same place for the last ten minutes. I just took the exit off I-10 to the town of St. Gabriel where the Louisiana women’s state prison is located.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I came to see . . . I wanted to see her. My mom. Sharon. But they wouldn’t let me in.” She’s making no attempt to hold back her tears now. “I couldn’t go in by myself. Because I’m underage. I need a . . . I have to have a parent to see her.”

“Where at the prison?” I ask, thinking she must be in some waiting room. Surely the prison guards wouldn’t have let a minor just walk out of the building.

“I’m outside. Sharon doesn’t know I’m not coming. She’s waiting for me.”

Several things pass through my head. None of them charitable, all along the lines of Sharon Kohen can continue to wait to see my daughter until hell freezes over. I also wonder how it is that Sharon thinks my daughter, who she kidnapped, is coming to see her. Were they writing letters to each other? I know e-mails aren’t allowed. Were they talking? Did Sharon somehow get Georgina’s cell phone number? Our house number?

“Can you text without hanging up?” I ask her.

“Um . . . yeah.” She sniffs. “I don’t have a tissue.”

“I have tissues in my car. I’ll be there in five minutes, Georgina.” Four, if I don’t obey the speed limit signs, which I’m not. “Honey, I need you to text your dad and let him know you’re okay and that I’m almost there. I’ll stay on the line.”

“How did you know where I was?” My daughter who usually seems to have her shit together better than I do sounds lost. She sounds like a little girl. A lost little girl. “Dad’s not with you?”

“He stayed home in case you showed up there.” I came because I had to. Because sitting at the house, waiting, wasn’t an option for me. “So go ahead and text him. I’ll be right here. I won’t hang up.”

“Okay,” she says in her little voice.

A series of beeps come out of the speakers of my car. There’s a pause, then Georgina’s voice. “I texted him.”

“Good. Now where are you?” I turn my windshield wipers up.

“Um . . . I’m walking out to the road.”

Relief floods every fiber of my being as I spot her up ahead in her gray jacket, her blue backpack on her back.

I pull onto the entrance road to the prison and throw my car in park, and jump out. I’m wearing my Saturday clean-the-house-and-go-to-the-market flannel shirt and no jacket. Rain hits my face. I reach out and grab Georgina, determined to get a hug, even if she fights me.

She doesn’t fight me.

She stands there, arms at her sides, letting me hug her. Hug her and her backpack still on her back. Both of us stand there in the rain and I silently thank God for her. I thank the Holy Mother. I thank her Son. For just the briefest moment, Georgina lays her head on my shoulder.

I feel a flood of overwhelming warmth. How long have I waited for her touch?

“I love you, Georgina,” I whisper in her ear, basking in the feel of her in my arms, remembering the smell of her hair when she was a baby. “And it’s okay if you don’t love me back. I have enough for both of us.”

She sniffs and takes a step away from me, and I let go of her. I smile at her. “Let’s go home,” I say.

She throws her backpack into the backseat and gets in the passenger side. I get in, buckle up, turn up the heat, and make a U-turn, headed for the interstate. But not five hundred feet down the road, I slow up.

I’m thinking about Sharon. I don’t want to, but I can’t stop thinking about her. I’m imagining her sitting in her prison uniform waiting for the girl she thinks . . . thought was her child. Against my will, I imagine what it would be like to be her. Wanting so desperately to see her daughter. Realizing it isn’t going to happen.

And then I think of Georgina. The desperation it took for her to come here. The determination. The bravery.

I hit my brakes and swing onto some sort of gravel access road.

“Where are we going?” Georgina presses her hand to the dash to steady herself.

I back onto the road, drive in the direction we just came from, and turn into the prison lot. “When are visiting hours over?” I ask my runaway.

“Two,” she says, staring at me. “But you have to check in by one fifteen. Why?”

I look at the clock on the dash. We have eight minutes.