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  67. 3:46 a.m.

She returned to the States fifteen months later.

The next date in her file is August 19, 2007.

In line with what LeHigh told me, my mother had tortured a young man to death only to find out days later that he was completely innocent.

She disappeared the next day.

No one had seen her since.

No one, except me.

::::

At 3:58 a.m., I pick up Lassie and head back to my bedroom. I poke my head into my father’s room as I pass and my eyes begin to burn.

The air is toxic with Murdock’s and my father’s fumes. I plug Lassie’s nose with two fingers and he laughs.

We settle into bed, and I text Ingrid that I will see her tomorrow.

My heart begins to race as the seconds tick toward four in the morning. I don’t want to fall asleep. I know that for the next twenty-three hours, I will be running.

Running from my mother.

:02

I wake up early for the first time in over a year.

2:57 a.m.

Three extra minutes.

In the past, I would have been ecstatic and I would have spent the minutes like a gift card, going on a shopping spree. Thirty extra seconds in the shower. An extra minute working out. Twenty extra seconds to floss (which according to the dentist who made a house call twice a year to clean my teeth, I needed to MAKE time for). But not today. By the time I process the nightmare and calm my breathing, the extra minutes have evaporated.

In my nightmare, my mother had injected me with another twenty-three day nightmare.

I was lost at sea.

In a small boat.

With a tiger.

Yes, it was oddly similar to Life of Pi — which I read in my early twenties (four minutes a day over the course of 204 days) — but with one big difference: the tiger wasn’t a tiger but a really big version of Lassie.

Speaking of whom, I gaze around the bed, but he isn’t there.

With my nightmare fading and my breathing under control, I begin to notice a slight stinging sensation on both my arms and my face.

I flip on the light and survey my arms.

They are covered in bright red scratches.

I jump out of bed and race to the small attached bath and look in the mirror. My face, neck, ears, arms, every inch of exposed flesh, is covered in raised red welts. I look like a monster.

“LASSIE!”

It takes me a couple minutes to find him. He’s hiding in the clothes hamper in the laundry room. He tries to swim to the bottom of the clothes, but I grab him by the scruff of the neck and lift him up.

Meow.

“I’m crazy? I’m crazy?” I scoff. “Dude, you scratched the living shit out of me.”

Meow.

“I attacked you? What are you talking about?”

Meow.