Chapter 7: The Pickup

My mother came through the front door of the building at ten, in her good coat, with Dad's girlfriend one step behind her.

The girlfriend had her phone up.

"This is so cute," she said. "It's like a little village."

"Put that away," I said.

"It's for Curtis. He wanted to see where Hattie's sleeping."

"He can see it in person if he asks."

She kept filming.

Maureen was standing at the foot of the stairs with a laundry basket on her hip, and she did not move.

Two other tenants had drifted into the hall as well, a man in a bathrobe and a student with headphones around her neck.

It was Sunday, and nobody in that building had anywhere else to be.

Hattie came out of the stairwell with her unicorn bag and stopped when she saw our mother.

"Why are you early?"

"Because I missed you, baby," Mom said, and held out her arms.

Hattie walked into them slowly.

Over her head, my mother looked at me with a face I knew from every school meeting I'd ever sat through.

"We need to talk, Lacey. Outside."

"We can talk here."

"I'd rather not do it in front of strangers."

"They're not strangers," Maureen said, from behind the laundry basket. "I've fed every one of them."

My mother ignored her.

"You told your sister she can live here. You've confused her. She came home last Sunday asking me why she can't have a fort."

"I never told her that."

"She cried herself to sleep, Lacey."

"Then why didn't you go in and hold her?" I said. "You were home."

The girlfriend's phone tilted toward me.

I looked straight at the lens.

"Go ahead," I said. "Film it."

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