“Please, Janie.” Her mother’s face crumpled and she covered it with her free hand. “It was all I could afford. I’m on social assistance now.” Her mother fell into a harsh sickly coughing fit lasting for half a minute before she recovered. “I’m doing the best I can to hang on but, Janie, please. I have to know…why? I can’t understand. I just can’t. Why did you do this horrible, horrible thing? Why?”

“Why? I could ask the same thing of you.”

“What?”

Janie’s eyes widened, her face turned red, tightening as if something inside had erupted, forcing her to stand, adjusting her grip on the phone.

“Why did you sleep with some asshole you hooked up with at Hoyt’s Bar? Why? It’s why Dad left us. I’m the product of your one-night stand! You don’t even know who my father is, do you? Do you know how that makes me feel?”

“I told you it’s complicated. It’s not the same thing at all.”

Janie pointed at her mother, stopping short of stabbing her finger into the glass. “It’s the same damned thing! It’s all connected. It’s why I blame you for all of this!”

“Janie, please!”

Breathing hard, her nostrils flaring, Janie glared at her mother with all the hate she could marshal before slamming down the handset and leaving the booth to wait at the security door to be taken back to her cell.

As the jail door opened and swallowed her daughter, the cold clanking of the steel locks mixed with the gasping sobs of Marlene’s demolished heart.

Few words were spoken by Ned and Flo Mitchell during their long drive to Portage la Prairie.

They arrived at the Agassiz Youth Centre, where their daughter, Marie, was being held in a segregated unit. For a moment they sat in the truck staring at the imposing stone building, which resembled a World War One–era high school. Then Ned squeezed Flo’s hand and they went in.

Other than one-word responses of “yes,” “no” and “thanks” to the officers who checked their IDs, scanned them for weapons and drugs before escorting them to the noncontact visiting area, the Mitchells were silent. But rules shouted from posters on the wall about contraband and how inappropriate behavior and/or language would terminate a visit.

The room had a large window with a row of stools and telephones. Ned and Flo waited for several minutes before Marie appeared, taking a stool on the opposite side.

Flo pressed her open palm to the glass and kept it there waiting for Marie to press hers there, too.

Marie didn’t.

Ned picked up their phone then shouldered together with Flo, holding it between them so they could talk to their daughter.

Marie’s voice sounded small and distant when she said “Hello.”

Tears filled Flo’s eyes—her daughter, the accused multiple murderer.