A pause. “Maybe there’s a little more.”
“Hannah.” Her voice was stern. The deceptions had been coming more frequently lately. Small, but a lie is a lie.
A sigh. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.” Parker glanced at the coffee table, where the assignment sheets sat.
She’d let the girl take a mental health day. After the incident last November, her daughter had had to cope with three traumas: a mother who’d been badly injured, a father jailed for the crime and life under a microscope at school. (Every student would have known about the incident a half hour after it happened. Thank you, social media — though Parker supposed that fifty years ago, word would have spread almost as quickly via analog phone calls. And before that? Telegraph and twice-daily newspapers. Nothing can stop the spread of a good, horrific story.)
Hannah was certainly improving, but there were bad days. How much of this was because of the incident and how much because of teenageness, though, was impossible to tell.
Without looking up from her toes, Hannah said, “The smell’s still there.”
The landlord had painted the house before they moved in and, yes, whatever he’d used had off-gassed an unpleasant sweetness.
“Won’t be long till we get our Greenstone.” A reference to the fortress the girl, at ten, had loved hearing her mother describe as she read a fantasy book aloud before bed every night. She’d gotten the Greenstone Lego set one Christmas, to her breathless delight.
Now Hannah gave no response. She fielded another text. Eyes down, she said, “Windows?”
Prone to paranoia and exceedingly security conscious, Parker kept the windows closed and locked at all times. This would be why the girl had the AC cranked up, of course. A bit of passive-aggressive sniping?
Probably.
Parker inhaled. She thought it was better. “We’ll air it out on Saturday.”
The girl sent another text.
“Hannah. Phone down. Now.”
With a tint of exasperation the girl complied.
Parker slid the assignments in front of her daughter, who scooted closer to the coffee table. Her mother scanned them. There were five problems still to do for class. Five out of seven. So not exactly just “a little more.”
Parker tapped problem 2.
Find the domain of function f(x) = 
.
Her daughter glanced down and then returned to polishing a nail.
“Hannah,” Parker said. Usually her mother referred to the girl in the light, truncated form of her name. The full two syllables contained a hint of warning.
Without looking up, the girl recited, “The domain’s the intersection of two sets.” She lifted a pen and wrote the answer in fast, careless script:
The first set is x ≤ 1. The second is −2 <x<2. The answer’s 1 ≤ x <2.
Her mother blinked and gave a soft laugh. “That’s right.”
Hannah’s expression said: obviously.
Parker raised her hand, five-high. The girl grimaced and returned an unenthusiastic tap.
Lord...
Parker was hardly surprised at the speed of the correct answer. The girl’s brilliance had been obvious for years. It just mystified her that she made the calculations so effortlessly, while Parker herself labored to arrive at the finish line.
So why did the girl have so little interest in a subject she was so good at, while preferring the arts: photography, drawing and writing?
“Get the rest of them done.”
“Okay.” A pause. “I was texting Kyle?”
“Were you?” Something was brewing. Parker measured responses. “How is he?”
“Cool. He says you’re pretty.”
“That’s very sweet.”
Another glance at a question. Hannah jotted more numbers, letters and symbols on the homework sheet. This answer too was right. The girl said, “He’s going to the mall tomorrow. He’s got to pick up a present for his brother.”
Hannah was clearly asking if she could join him. Students as young as thirteen or fourteen pseudo-dated — really just hanging out together, more flirtatious than anything, and in theory Parker had no problem with her daughter doing so. But her mother’s swelling unease usually kicked in and derailed plans.
Parker warned her daughter about the level of crime in the tough, under-policed city of Ferrington, which was certainly true.
But she didn’t tell her the full truth.
About how much risk they both might be in because of her ex.
And so she kept the girl close.
But now, in a reward for her tackling the homework, she said, “I think that’ll work out.”
In response to the tacit question: Can I go too?
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Finish up. Pizza for dinner?”
A bright smile.
She’d use the meal to learn more about Kyle. She’d met him twice and he seemed nice. She wanted to know more.
Shivering, she headed into her bedroom to change into jeans and, what else, given the temperature? A sweatshirt.
On the way to her dresser she glanced at her phone, lying faceup on the bed.
She stopped in mid-stride, feeling her heart ratchet up.
Eleven missed calls.
Parker listened to the first message.
“Oh, Christ...”
15
Packing.
Fast.
Careless.
In jeans, a gray sweatshirt and a quilted baby-blue vest, Allison Parker was tossing random clothes into a large gym bag and backpack with shaking hands, her muscles weak. “Two years early? Letting him out?” Spoken aloud or to herself? She didn’t know.
Hannah was in her room, slowly debating what to put into her own luggage.
“Just the basics! Get going.”
“Jesus, Mom. Chill.”
Her phone sounded with a noisy rock song she’d loaded because her daughter liked it. Her lawyer, David Stein, was calling back. Her quivering hands nearly dropped it. She plugged in earbuds and continued filling the suitcase. She stepped farther into her bedroom so her daughter couldn’t hear her side of the conversation.
“How did it happen?” she asked.
“I don’t know. You ask me, he worked them. He did one of his slick songs and dances.” He fell silent a moment. Then said in a voice even more somber: “Listen to me, Allison. There’s something else you need to know.” A pause, as if working up his courage. “After he got out, a couple of cons — prisoners — went to a guard. They said Jon had told them when he got out, he wants to find you.” Decibels dropped as he continued. “He wants to find you and kill you.”
Allison Parker lowered her head.
“Of course he does...”
Maybe whispered, maybe thought.
“What, Alli? I didn’t hear you.”
So, whispered.
She was thinking. So, here it was: the moment she’d dreaded, the moment she’d thought she could dodge forever. And the plans she’d made for disappearing with Hannah to a new life, somewhere far away, before he was released were useless.
Of course he does...
She asked, “Do they know where he is?”
“No. He has twenty-four hours to register with his parole officer, with an address. He hasn’t. I talked to a detective at FPD. After what those cons told them, there’ll be officers looking for him.”
What to take? Jeans, sweats, underwear, socks, perfume... Wait, perfume? She set it back on the dresser, choosing Tampax and Advil instead.
“We’re leaving town.”
“You should. Where?”
“I don’t know. I’m not telling anybody. I’ll call from the road. Only your landline. I don’t trust mobiles.”