I thought about the beautiful man sitting at the counter, asking me if I did any handy work. I felt for his card in my back pocket to make sure it was still there, to reassure myself that he was real and not something my mind had tricked me into seeing.

“No,” I said. “I know.”

Inside the house, the kitchen was quiet. No fan, no ticking from the loud clock on the stove. And then I noticed that the TV was off, the screen blank, flat gray and dusty.

I flipped a switch on the wall. Nothing. No hum from the refrigerator. And it was getting dark inside.

“Mom?” I called out.

She was asleep on her bed, her hairline telltale sweaty. Birdie sat beside her, in the crook of my mother’s bent legs, which both my mother and Birdie liked to call The Nest. If she stayed in The Nest, she was safe, but apparently she hadn’t.

She held two Barbie dolls, one male, dark haired, in a black jacket but no pants.

“Bird,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“The TV went off,” Birdie said, “but Mom was asleep.”

“How long has she been asleep?”

Birdie shook her head. She didn’t know. She had a poor concept of time. Two hours might have felt like days to her. Sometimes it did to me.

On the floor beside the bed, Birdie had half packed a pink backpack with pairs of underwear, a sweater, and a different doll, and in the front pocket a whole handful of rocks, crystals, and river stones, different colors and shapes. Just like Mom, I thought.

“Were you going somewhere?” I asked her, kicking at the bag.

She held up her arms to be picked up, and I indulged her, swinging her onto my hip and smelling her hair. I carried her out to the kitchen to get her a glass of water, but when I turned on the tap, nothing came out.

“There’s no electricity or water?” I said to Birdie, only half asking. I was trying not to shout. But it wasn’t her fault.

She shook her head.

“There’s a big poop in the toilet,” Birdie said. “It won’t flush.”

I let out a groan.

I tried to remember the last time I’d paid bills. Usually they came in the mail while I was at work and my mother set them aside, then gave me the cash to take to the Big M so I could pay at the counter. I thought back a week, two weeks. I’d been going to Baby Jane’s after work. More than once, I’d slept in the car, waking stiff and cold in the morning but getting back on my bike and riding back in to work.

I didn’t even know where my mother kept the cash. I used to. I had dipped into it before, but now she moved it every few weeks. I was ready to tear the house apart looking for it.

I looked in the cupboard and found one last juice box for Birdie. She wagged her feet back and forth, sitting on the counter.