The sky is completely blue when we step outside, no clouds, they’re all hanging around in my head. Sucking in fresh air I look up at the sky, to where my real mom is, and wonder what she was like.

She wasn’t very attentive to her children if Danny’s story can be believed. But who am I to judge? Maybe she was having a bad day when they passed by. Maybe she was sick, and that’s why she left Katie out on the deck looking after me while she slept. Or maybe she was drunk, I’ll never know now. Everyone who knows is gone. Unless Katie told her husband something about her, what she remembered of her mom before her mom took her life. What she remembers of that day.

Icy shivers run through my body. The woman killed herself and it’s my fault. Well, not my fault exactly, but because of me. It was Nancy Wall’s fault. But then my mother left me out in the yard, toasting in the sun with a heavy woolen coat covering my dehydrating body. She left me unattended. It wouldn’t have happened if she’d been taking better care of me. Jesus, Becca. Stop. I don’t know what I should be thinking, my mind is scrambled.

‘Do you want to go for a coffee?’ Jeff says, nodding towards the Dunkie’s across the street.

‘I think I should ring him,’ I say.

‘Ring who?’

‘Her husband, Thomas Collins. I think I should let him know Katie was right this time, that she finally found her sister. He should know that, shouldn’t he? That she wasn’t mad.’

‘Relax, Becca.’

‘No, I won’t relax. And I want him to hear it from me, not Turner.’ I’m walking at a ferocious pace now, Jeff struggling to keep up. I don’t even know where I’m going. I feel his hand on my arm, pulling me around to face him. I’m looking this way and that, anywhere except at him.

‘Becca, stop it,’

My head is twitching now, uncontrollably, but I can’t stop it. Why can’t I stop it?

‘Becca… Becca.’ Jeff is still calling my name, at least I think it’s Jeff, what is happening to me?

I wake to shadows of heads hovering amongst the bright light blinding my eyes, the ground hard beneath me. Amongst the voices I hear Jeff’s. He is telling people that I’m okay, that I only fainted, to stand back. Then I see his face. ‘Becca, Becca.’ I fill my lungs, holding in the air, nervous to let it out. ‘Breathe, Becca, breathe.’ Slowly I allow my chest to rise and fall. Pain throbs through my head.

‘Jeff,’ I whisper.

Someone hands him water in a Dunkin’ Donut’s paper cup. Strange I can make out the yellow and pink logo, most things are still quite blurred.