Chapter 11: On the Air

I stood in the stairwell with my hand flat on the cold cinderblock.

"Mrs. Sorensen? Are you there?"

"When does your evening news start tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow? Six. But the segment is Thursday."

"I'm not responding to their segment," I said. "I'm coming in tomorrow. Live. At six. Ask your boss."

She called back in nine minutes.

"He says yes," she said. "He says please bring whatever you've got."

I went back to the party and told the mom across the hall.

She put down her juice.

"What are you going to wear?"

"I hadn't thought about it."

"You're going to wear something that isn't that sweatshirt," she said. "I'll call my sister."

Her sister was my size and lived in Grandview.

By ten the next morning she'd driven over a navy dress and a blazer in a dry cleaner's bag.

At eleven I went to the police station on the west side with my lawyer.

I gave a detective in a cardigan a thumb drive, the swipe log, and a printed list of eleven transfers.

She looked through it without saying much.

"This is a lot," she said finally.

"It's two hundred and twelve photos of my daughter. I can explain every one."

"I believe you," she said. "Believing you isn't the problem. Give me some time."

At four, my mother came to sit with Clara.

At four-ten, Matt walked into Clara's room in his hoodie, with his hair sticking up.

"You're supposed to be asleep," I said.

"I heard you're going on TV. I had to see the blazer."

"Who told you?"

"Everyone. The boy across the hall told the day nurse, who told the night nurse, who called me." He looked at me. "It's a good blazer."

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