Chapter 6: Casserole

My mother arrived at six that evening with a casserole and a cane.

I heard her before I saw her.

"I don't care whose college it is, I'm going up," said a voice on the porch.

A heavy knock rattled the green door.

I came down the stairs two at a time.

Karin Lindqvist stood on the step in her flannel coat, with her grey-blonde braid over one shoulder.

She held a covered glass dish against her chest.

Her truck was parked across two spaces at the curb, still ticking.

"Mom."

"You didn't call me," she said.

"How did you..."

"A teller at the bank showed me the video on her phone."

"Thirty-eight thousand people watched my kid tell the truth, and I heard about it from a teller."

Her voice cracked on the last word.

I stepped across the threshold and she hit me with the casserole, and the cane, and her whole arm.

It was tater tot hotdish, still hot through the glass.

I held on to her until my knees stopped shaking.

"I'm okay," I said into her shoulder.

"You're not," she said. "You smell like somebody else's house. Who's got my girl?"

"Karin Lindqvist?"

Knox had come out of the office behind me, in his sweater, holding a pen.

My mother looked him up and down, from the tired eyes to the inky left hand.

Her mouth went flat.

"You the Holloway?"

"One of them."

"Which kind?"

"The kind who gave her the attic," Knox said.

"Hm," said my mother.

She walked past him into the house, leaning on her cane, and climbed three flights without once looking at the banister.

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