“Josie, what did ya take?” Except it was too late. She was already nodding off while the baby wailed in the background. As he carried the baby and then Mom to the car—we had been down this route many times before—he assured me she’d be okay.

He meant Mom, but I didn’t want her to be okay.

I hated her for abandoning us every day as she lolled into her high, leaving me and Dad and now a baby to fight for her life when she so carelessly threw it away. I should have been sad for her, not angry. And yet I couldn’t cry anymore. I had tasted happiness for those perfect months, and now it was…gone. And now I just wanted her gone too. So I told her as much.

“Why do you keeping doing this to us? Why won’t you just die already and let us live?” I shot the words at her like bullets intended to kill.

“Marin Hunter! Don’t say that. She’s your mother!” Bennett to Mom’s rescue again.

I scoffed. “My mother? What kind of mother abandons her child day after day like this? Because that’s what I still am—a kid. No matter how much it seems the other way around!”

Mom was just cognizant enough to shout back, “I’m not too high to whup your ass, girl!”

“Whup my ass, huh? You can’t even see straight! We’d all be better off if you died and went to hell, where you deserve to go.” I stormed away to my bedroom.

Before Dad left, he found me sobbing into my pillow. He thought I was wracked with regret over my outburst, but I was sobbing a prayer to God that He just take Mom away once and for all.

Dad rubbed circles on my back. “Your mom just needs a doctor’s check-up, Mare. Birthing a baby is a mighty big strain on the body. She’ll be back home in no time.”

I believed him. I shouldn’t have.

That was now two and a half hours ago. It was dark outside now, and the credits for Gilmore Girls rolled down the television screen. I channel surfed to a rerun of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to distract me, wondering if the clock-checking would ever go away, the fear of a parent leaving and never coming back, especially now that a baby relied on us, on me. I was thirteen years old, but most days I imagined this was what thirty felt like. Old. Exhausted. Burdened. Ready to give up.

On the stove I was stirring Hamburger Helper, the only edible thing we had in the pantry. As I heard a single set of footsteps, I glanced over my shoulder. Dad ambled through the door, his limp more exaggerated than yesterday.

“Where’s Mom and the baby?”

He shook his head. He wouldn’t speak.

“Dad?”