A police officer tried to get information from me, but it was like I wasn’t there. My little girl’s body was taken. I screamed as they took her away even though she was already gone. My Hannah. My reason for living, was gone.

A woman came and put her arm around me. I don’t know who she was. I never saw her again. I wouldn’t recognize her if I did. She said little, but she was there. Like an angel. Somehow I could talk to her. “I want to die,” I said.

“I know, honey,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

Then she was gone. Had I imagined her?

The press arrived with cameras and video cameras. Dan arrived after them. “What have you done?” he shouted at me. “What have you done?” I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t even speak. I was catatonic.

There were discussions on whether I should be tried for murder or manslaughter. There would be an investigation. It had already begun. People were talking to Dan. To Shirlee. To my co-workers. To people who didn’t know me well enough to speak about me. What kind of person was I? What kind of mother was I? No one asked me. I could have answered the latter. I was the worst kind. The kind who killed her own child.

They put me in a police car and drove me downtown to the station. I waited alone in a room for more than an hour. It seemed like no one knew what to do with me. A few police officers came in and asked me questions. Inane questions. Did I know she was in the car? Had I left her in the car on purpose? When did I realize she was in the car? “Probably when I started screaming hysterically and collapsed,” I wanted to say.

Then a man about my age came and talked to me. He wasn’t with the police. He wore a suit. His voice was calm. Sympathetic. He asked me questions, and I mostly just blinked at him. He told me that he was from the prosecutor’s office or someplace official. He finished with his questions and spoke with the police. There was a discussion on whether or not I should be arrested and fingerprinted, but the man intervened. The talk of court and jail scared me, but nothing they could do could match the pain I already felt. Someone asked if I wanted a sedative. I turned it down. I deserved to feel the pain. I deserved to feel every barb, every hurt, then, God willing, to die.