Twenty-nine days.
I can hardly say it out loud. I am afraid I will jinx it.
In official mail. After five years of hell—my Glory is comin’ home.
I read it over every day, every morning, soon as I open my eyes.
She will be coming home in time for spring.
In time for daffodils and tulips and then later on in the summer my morning glories.
In time for shorts and sittin’ on patios havin’ ice cream and riding her bike, oh she loved to ride her bike she used to ride it all around the neighbourhood.
That’s what I’m telling you, she was just an ordinary kid, oh yes! Never wanted to be away from Mom, drove in the front seat with me all the time till her playin’ around with the radio made me crazy and I sent her to the back seat.
Well when she comes home . . . she can play with the radio as much as she wants.
Unless she gets another charge. On the phone I begged her I said—
Glory, you must be the perfect inmate, now think of all the things we are gonna do, we will go hiking round the Cabot Trail, drive down the South Shore to Lunenburg, swim in the ocean . . .
And she promised, oh she promised she wants to come more than anything else in the world so I know she will be good. And—
Years from now this will all be a bad dream. We will look back at this terrible time and shake our heads. Glory will be—I don’t know, a hockey coach or a teacher or a mum with seven beautiful, happy kids running around and we will be sittin’ right here in this kitchen playin’ cards and we’ll see something on the TV about a prison and we will look at each other just shake our heads. It’ll be like yes it happened? But it never happened. That’s what it’ll be like.