LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘The hospital doesn’t report . . . accidents.’

      ‘Accidents? This wasn’t an accident!’ My voice pitched high, anger and pain surging through my body. ‘You’ve seen the bruises on her wrists!’

      ‘My apologies.’ Dr Griffith shook his head vigorously. ‘I just mean that the hospital isn’t legally required to report anything other than gunshot or stab wounds, and this is likely why you haven’t heard anything from them.’

      I pressed my palm to my forehead, a tingle of panic buzzing in my fingertips. But this time I won, pushing the anxiety away. I would report it myself.

      ‘Olivia’s a good girl. What happened?’ I asked.

      I heard myself using the present tense, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want her to slide into the past yet. She was still here.

      His eyes were kind but calculating, the eyes of a lawyer rather than a doctor.

      ‘I don’t know. But I promise you this’ – he held the cup of water out to me – ‘you’ll need your strength to find out.’

      I took the water and gulped down every drop.

      × × ×

      It started raining as soon as I left the hospital. It was almost night, black clouds edging over the horizon.

      I turned onto my street, slowly rolling toward my Victorian-style three-bedroom. Mine was the smallest house on the street, perched at the end of a row of grander ones.

      My neighbors were middle-class professionals, lawyers, doctors. Their wives stayed home and raised chubby-cheeked toddlers. They had playdates and did hot yoga and went for coffee dates. I, a single working mother, pregnant at eighteen, stuck out like a sore thumb.

      I never would’ve been able to afford the house on my own. But everything I did was for Olivia, to give her a better chance in life: middle-class neighbors, a good school, low crime rate, and right by the beach. I wanted her to have all the things I’d never had. So I couldn’t regret any of it. Not now, not ever.

      I imagined Olivia on our last morning together. I’d watched her swaying to silent music in the living room, her eyes closed, the earbuds of her iPhone pressed deep into her ears. A scarf I’d never seen before was draped around her neck. It was silk, scarlet, like a flame around her throat. She was wearing a baggy sweatshirt, loose-fitting sweats. Dark circles were smudged like half-moons beneath her eyes, her face pale as a tissue.

      ‘Are you feeling okay?’ I’d pressed the back of my hand to her forehead, concern washing over me. It was smooth and cool. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and drew her close for a hug.

      ‘I’m fine. Just studying.’ She pulled away sharply, her brow crinkling.

      I caught the undercurrent of her words: Would you ever just stop asking? My mom used to tell me that I never let things go. Sarah said that too.

      I almost started questioning Olivia. Everything was something to be worried about. She was sick, she had cancer, she was being bullied. My stomach gave a panicky spasm. I did that sometimes: worried and questioned and analyzed until I found a rational reason. I needed the whole picture to understand the details. The problem was that it never changed anything. Like when my mom died.

      Get a grip, Abi, I said to myself. She’s just being a teenager.

      I busied myself with my laptop bag, the cold slice of her rejection smarting.

      ‘I know it’s Saturday, but I have to go into work for a bit.’ I hated leaving her alone, but as a single mom sometimes I had no choice. ‘You know the rules. No riding in your friends’ cars. Don’t walk on the main road.’

      I waited for her to point out that I never worked on the weekend. I wanted to tell someone about a new case I was working on at my CPA firm, Brown Thomas and Associates.

      It was the first time I’d felt excited about work in years. Accounting wasn’t what I was supposed to do with my life. Once upon a time, I’d been a journalist. I’d had fire, ambition, ideas. I loved the buzz of investigating, seeing my byline under a headline.

      But the antisocial hours of a journalist didn’t work for a single mom with a baby who battled severe ear infections. I was a mother first. I would never abandon my daughter the way my mom had abandoned me – loving me, then turning away; being there, then . . .

      So I’d switched to accounting. It allowed me regular hours and more time with my daughter. I’d come to accept the trade-off years ago.

      ‘Do you want me to stay?’ My smile slipped a notch. ‘You know you come first.’

      ‘No, honestly, it’s fine, Mom.’ She’d already dismissed me. ‘I have to study for this calculus test anyway.’

      I looked at her, feeling strangely lost. I wondered suddenly when the last time was that we’d talked properly. I opened my mouth to find out what was going on. We were closer than other mothers and daughters; we told each other everything. But Olivia stood abruptly and stretched, yawning big.

      ‘I’m gonna take a shower, Mom. See you at the barbecue later.’

      She’d plucked up the red scarf from where it lay on the table, turned, and walked away, the slip of silk dragging like a discarded teddy bear across the floor.

      Within seconds, she’d disappeared into the shadows at the top of the stairs.

      × × ×

      The memory sliced through me. It seemed so obvious now. Of course she was pregnant. I hated myself for not seeing it, for walking away when I should’ve stayed. Guilt suffocated me, pressing down on me like a crippling fog.

      I slowed outside my driveway as lights flashed around me. Cars and vans overflowed along the street outside my house. A microphone was shoved in my face as soon as I opened my car door, and people started shouting my name.

      ‘Abi! Rob Krane, KOMO-TV. Can you tell us more about Olivia’s condition? Will her doctors try to keep her on life support? Will they be able to save the baby?’

      ‘I-I-,’ I stammered, edging toward my front porch. How did they know? My elderly neighbor, Mrs Nelson, stared at me from across the road, her mouth hanging open, the evening newspaper in her hand.

      ‘No comment,’ I said, my voice wobbly and unsteady.

      I raced up the steps and let myself inside, black dots dancing across my vision from the flashbulbs. Exhaustion swept over me and I leaned against the door, the voices now muted to a dull mumble.

      Finally I staggered to my feet. I needed a distraction from the creeping anxiety threatening to overwhelm me. I went into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of vodka from the freezer. I poured a finger into a glass and swallowed it fast. It burned, but I poured another and took it upstairs to Olivia’s room.

      I snapped on the light. It was still messy, like an explosion in a clothes factory. It smelled of lemony shampoo and dirty socks. Her blankets trailed off the bed.

      I set the glass of vodka on Olivia’s dresser and draped the blankets neatly over the bed, then sat on the edge. Something on her bedside table caught the afternoon light. Olivia’s cell phone. It was attached to a charging cord, but when I picked it up, the plug dropped out. The battery was dead.

      The sound of a knock at the front door startled me. I slipped Olivia’s phone into my hoodie pocket as I went downstairs. I looked through the peephole, expecting it to be a reporter, but instead it was a tall, broad-shouldered teenager wearing a wrinkled blue shirt halfway untucked from his jeans. His fair hair was disheveled, his hazel eyes so raw and swollen I almost didn’t recognize him.

      The football build of Olivia’s boyfriend looked like it had been put through the washing machine and shrunk. I took in his red eyes – the dark circles, the tear tracks trailing his putty-colored cheeks – and felt a swell of compassion. This inexorable tide of grief was his as

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