Chapter 15: Mom's Motion

I walked down the drive alone.

Rafe wanted to come, and I told him this one was mine.

He stood on the porch with his hands in his pockets and the light behind him.

He did not take his eyes off the gate.

My mother was standing outside it in the dark.

She had on her good wool coat over a nightgown, and her short silver hair was flat on one side.

I had never seen my mother go out of the house in a nightgown in my life.

"Open the gate, Joanna," she said.

"I'll open it when I know why you're here."

"I'm here to bring you home."

"I am home," I said. "Or I'm closer to it than I was at six o'clock."

She looked past me up the drive at the lit kitchen windows and the man on the porch.

Her mouth went thin.

"Has he touched you?"

"Yes, Mom. Last night. Twice."

She flinched, and I felt nothing but a long cold clearness.

"I'll tell you what I came to say," she said.

"You'll let me say all of it before you decide anything, because you owe me that."

"I owe you that?"

"All of it, Joanna."

I folded my arms and waited.

She held up the shoebox and lifted the lid with her thumb.

My phone lay inside, on a folded dish towel, with its screen lit.

"Your father is asleep," she said. "He took two pills and went to bed angry. I took this out of his coat."

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