My answer: I put on my jacket and headed to the door.

‘You can’t walk away from this,’ she yelled.

‘Yes, I can,’ I shouted at her, not turning back.

‘You get back here! There are things to say.’

I walked out the door.

I went to a local joint for breakfast. Eggs and sausage and two sides of white toast and too much coffee. I really should be eating better. I really should do the gym thing five days a week as I kept promising myself. I really needed comfort food right now. Part of me wanted to call Klara, tell her what had happened in Van Nuys yesterday, and how I had walked into it all. But I knew that when I explained the exchange that I’d just had with her mother … well, the division between them was big enough already. I didn’t want to widen it further. Klara spent up to ten hours a day as a social worker in a shelter for abused women. I knew that letting her know about all that I had witnessed would have enraged her – and have also made her go into one of her rants about her mother and how she was now ‘aligned with the fascists who are trying to control our lives’. I certainly understood and appreciated her angry sentiments – but just couldn’t face them right now.

I went to work. I drove twelve straight hours. And netted $163, tips included. I kept thinking of Elise and what her business was at that clinic. Was she a doctor? A senior nurse? Someone working for the social services? And how was she handling the blowback from it all; the trauma that kept catching me unawares all the time? Over the rest of the week I put in sixteen hours daily behind the wheel, taking a two-hour break somewhere during the course of this long shift. I worked six straight days – and had almost $1100 to show for such crazy hours. It paid for some essentials. Being out for all but a few hours late at night meant I could dodge any contact with my wife – which struck me as necessary right now. Especially as I couldn’t get that burning man out of my head.

After ninety-two hours of work over six days I decided to take a twenty-hour break. I crashed in bed for a long stretch. When I woke it was just after twelve noon. Agnieska had left me a note saying that she was out ‘on church business’ … whatever that meant. I made coffee. I turned on my phone. There was one text awaiting me. My lips tightened.

The text read:

Hi Brendan – could you please give me a call?

Instinct told me: don’t call back.

I didn’t call back.

But I did text her.

Hi Elise – how can I help?

Immediately she texted back: