Page 44 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“Since last Sunday.”

“And what time did you arrive here, at your friend’s trailer?”

Two questions in and my stomach is already pretzeled into the Gordian knot. “Late afternoon.”

“Straight here from … Kansas City, isn’t it?”

“Right.”

“You didn’t stop anywhere else?” When I shake my head, he sighs. “All right. Let’s go back in time a bit, shall we? Let’s go back to when you tried to kill your mother.”

“I didn’t try to killher.”

“The charge was reduced to assault with a deadly weapon in the end, sure, but you don’t run someone over with a car just to break a few bones.”

“I served my time,” I say. “What I did was horrible. Unforgivable.”

“You know what I always found interesting? After your arrest, you never once said you were sorry. Not a drop of remorse.”

“Why aren’t you asking me more important things? Like where I was?”

“We’ll get there.”

“I live ten hours away. I worked every single night that week. You can call my boss, Kiera Geraghty. She knows my shifts to the minute. She’ll tell you I was doing my first palm tattoo the night my mother disappeared.”

But these facts are of no use to him. His sharp turn from affable to hostile leaves me reeling. “When is the last time you spoke to your mother?”

“My parole hearing.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I would remember otherwise.”

“That’s what I think too,” he says, offering me another piece of paper. “But your mother’s phone records show she placed five calls to you the day before she disappeared.”

The highlighted phone number is, indeed, my own. “I didn’t answer.”

“Why wouldn’t you answer a call from your long-estranged mother? What if she wanted to reconcile?”

The last question is the one tormenting me. I don’t remember the calls because I don’t remember my mother’s number. I decline calls from unknown numbers as a rule. Thewhat if?questions rattle in my mind like dice in a cup. What if she needed me? What if she was in danger? What if she was scared? What if the last thing she wanted to hear was my voice? What if she hadn’t forgotten about me after all? With each beat of my heart comes a twinge in my chest, the muscle trying to rend itself in two.

“I didn’t know it was her,” I say quietly. “But she—Grace told me she gave her my phone number, in case of emergency. She made me Grace’s emergency contact at school.”

“How do you know this?”

I stop short of mentioning Connor’s name. I want to leave as many people out of this quagmire as possible, even if I doubt he would do the same for me. “I was called to her school about a disciplinary matter.”

“For an estranged sister, you seem awfully invested in getting Grace out of various, ah,disciplinary matters, as you put it.”

My eyes drift to the recorder, now completely visible. What I want to say next requires me to bare my soul.I need my sister to love me.The thought of my words living forever on tape, a confession of the loneliness I have endured for my entire adult life,will hollow me out, like I must scoop out my insides and display them in a museum for the world to examine. “I’m close by,” I manage. “The least I can do is help if she asks for it.”

He peppers me with mundane questions then, where I live and what I do for work and where was I on the night of my mother’s disappearance. My heartbeat is just beginning to slow when Josiah puts me on the back foot again. “What kind of car do you drive, Providence?”

His gravelly voice curdles my name. “I didn’t notice when I pulled in,” he elaborates.

“It’s the blue Honda out front. Nothing fancy.”

“Mind if I take a look at it on my way out?”

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