I think Betsy met with her only once, but I can’t really remember. Like I said, those were the crazy times, muddled by the numbing onslaught of pharmaceuticals. Let me be clear: I don’t feel guilty about anything. I mean, I haven’t been a great mother to Betsy this past year, but that’s to be expected when a mother is grieving the loss of her daughter. As I mentioned, we’d been growing apart since before Mary died. Betsy seems to be dealing with Mary’s death in her own special and sneaky way.

I knew Betsy and Mary shared some secrets with each other, and kept me in the dark. I didn’t appreciate it when Mary hid her contact with her birth mother from me, and I don’t appreciate Betsy hiding Bo. They should realize mothers need to know everything. That’s what mothers do. We guide, we control, we listen, we encourage.

We always find out when our children hide things from us, big and small.

It’s a mother’s instinct to search for the truth. Knowledge is power, they say. And now you know almost the whole story. Almost.

20

11:00 a.m.

Cows kill twenty people a year in the US, which seems like a low number given what we do to those poor creatures.

Bees murder about one hundred folks and sharks kill less than one person per year, even though they get the worst rap. I wonder about chickens. Have they had any revenge? Uncooked, contaminated food kills more than five thousand people a year, and I bet a lot of that is chicken. Karma again. Makes you think.

And I am thinking. I need to figure out the relationship between Betsy and Bo. I need to find out what she is doing out with Bo until 2:00 a.m., although I suppose by now we can all make a guess. Besides that, what are they up to?

I suppose all younger siblings learn how to be sneakier than their older siblings. They watch what the older one does, what the older one gets caught doing, and then they do it better.

What has sibling rivalry caused you to do? Think about it.

A Google search doesn’t provide an address for Bo. I’ll need to track him down at school, or at the hardware store. I can talk to Angelica and find out his schedule. My head spins with possibilities as I walk through the courtyard to the front door. Could I set an even bigger trap? Perhaps so.

The dry cleaning is dropped off on Wednesdays, left outside on the bench below the sign indicating deliveries. This way, I don’t have to talk to anyone. There’s a note with my name on it stuck on top of the bright green dry-cleaning bag.

I hope they didn’t find anything embarrassing in anyone’s pockets, David. A condom here, a lipstick there.