Chevy is rattling on about what she imagines life as a grownup will be like; her little hopes and dreams. As she talks my eyes well with tears.

“Why do you do it?” I ask, interrupting her stream of consciousness.

“What?” she asks, looking puzzled.

“How on earth can you prostitute yourself?” The question itself makes me want to retch.

Chevy sits up, wipes away my tears.

“There’s lots of reasons,” she says. “For me, it started out as a way to get money just to eat and stuff.”

“Robyn always had food on the table,” I say in protest.

“For Robyn it was different.”

“Different? Different how?”

“At first it seems glamorous. You know, thinking about guys wanting you; the money and the clothes and the nightlife. It seems like the life of a movie star or something. But, like that’s not how it really is and you don’t find out until it’s too late.”

“Oh God,” I cover my face with my hands.

“Hey,” Chevy says. “It’s okay. Don’t cry.” She is stroking my hair and murmuring words of encouragement. Her kindness plucks me from my despair.

I mop my face brusquely with the back of my hand.

“Well this is something,” I say, reigning in my emotions. “The patient comforting the visitor.”

“It ain’t no big thang,” she says with her teenage inflection, laughing.

I reach over and give her a hug, being careful not to squeeze her too tightly, mindful of her healing ribs.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” she whispers into my ear.

October 7, 2002

It’s just after seven when I cross the threshold from work. The house is hot, as usual; the weatherman warning against a “protracted heat wave the likes of which we’ve never seen before.” I close my eyes to the heat and think about the sweet relief of a cool shower washing the heat of the day from my body.

I drop my purse to the floor and close the door behind me. The little pamphlet that Sister Margaret gave me the other day about praying the Rosary falls to the floor. I pick it up and fan through the pages. Inside are various pictures with titles like, “Second Sorrowful Mystery”, and “Fourth Glorious Mystery”. Though reading through the entire pamphlet seems daunting, I open to a single page of Christ holding bread out to his disciples gathered round him at the table. The title at the top of the page is “Fifth Luminous Mystery”. I begin reading the meditation below the picture when I am interrupted by the telephone. I stuff the booklet back into the folds of my purse and sprint to answer the phone.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Skinner?” a male voice asks.

“Yes?”

“John Simpson here. From Peaceful Acres.”

His voice is taut with an unnerving disquiet. My heart flips in my chest.

“Yes?”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“What’s wrong?” Needles of fear prick my spine.

“Robyn was doing really well; we felt she was ready for a field trip to an NA meeting with the main group of young adults.”

“And?”

“It was all a ruse. She snuck out of the meeting, gave our administrator the slip, I’m afraid.”

My body is suddenly gelatin weak. “How can this have happened?” My voice has risen in volume and timber.

“Look, I’m very sorry, but like I said. We thought your daughter was really getting the program when it turns out all she really wanted to do was gain access to the outside world so she could escape. There’s no way we can foresee that kind of deception.”

I realize that any continued conversation will just turn into a pissing contest and so thank Mr. Simpson for his time and hang up the phone. Helplessness splatters through my body like spilled red wine on white carpet. I glance at my watch while simultaneously dialing Bart Strong’s number. I have no hope that he will pick up at this hour, but it doesn’t matter. He owes me a phone call anyway.

To my shock and satisfaction he picks up on the first ring.

“Bart Strong,” the familiar husky voice answers.

I explain what happened.

“BLU BOY must have found out where she was, and convinced her to leave the treatment center. He was probably waiting for her when she ran off.”

“Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe she just ran away on her own.”

“I’m going back to San Francisco tonight,” I say.

“Hold up a minute. You don’t even know if that’s where she is.”

“Right now it’s the only thing I have to go on. Maybe I can get someone in the Tenderloin to talk to me.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. Look, sit tight for a few minutes. I’m going make a couple of phone calls.”

I huff out an impatient breath and give my watch yet another glance: seven twenty.

“I’m leaving at eight,” I warn.

Hanging up the phone I immediately begin mobilizing various articles that I surmise might be useful for my foray into the dark San Francisco night. I stuff a flashlight, a pair of binoculars I picked up a month ago at an Army surplus store, my ubiquitous bottle of water, a sweater, and my Rolaids, just in case, into a small canvas bag.

I pace the living room, one eye on the portable phone on the coffee table, one eye on my watch, willing the minute hand to hasten its glacial sweep towards the twelve. With five minutes to go, I am suddenly startled to hear a knock on the front door.

I flip on the porch light and peer through the peephole. I twist the lock back and open the door.

“Freddie? What are you doing here?”

The man who helped Bart and I rescue Robyn stands before me; again, dressed all in black, his black moustache the most prominent thing about him.

“Got a call from Bart,” he explains.

The dark blue van is parked in front of the house.

“Let’s go,” he says.

He opens the passenger side door to the van and I get in, tossing my canvas bag onto the floor in front of me. He closes the door for me and heads for the driver’s side, but not before our eyes meet.

As he hops into the van, I peer out my window to see Mrs. Cotillo staring at us. This time she makes no effort to hide the fact that she is watching my movements. I want to smile, but I don’t. I turn my face away as Freddie pulls from the curb.

“So, what kind of work do you do?” he asks.

“I’m an accountant,” I say; “actually just a bookkeeper,” I amend, though technically not even that is true. “But I’m going to be going back to school to get my degree.”

Freddie nods but doesn’t say anything.

“What about you? What do you do?”

“Actually, I’m a dentist,” he says.

“Really?” I say, surprised.

“I have a practice in Antioch.”

We fall silent a moment.

“Got any other kids?” he asks.

“No. You?”

He shakes his head. “Amanda was an only child too.”

I purse my lips together, my eyes dart from the blur of the East Bay rushing by my window to Freddie’s austere profile. Curiosity about what happened to his daughter Amanda pushes me to ask intrusive questions.

“You mentioned before that Amanda hooked on drugs?”

“Yeah. She had it bad. Started experimenting when she was a freshman in high school, hanging out with the wrong crowd. The usual story.”

I wait for him to give me more information, but his eyes travel to the speedometer and then back to Highway 24. The sky in front of us is a dusky violet crisscrossed by nectarine colored skeins of fragile clouds.

“And that’s how you met Bart?”

Freddie nods.

“I was desperate. Amanda kept running away. Bart was the only one who seemed to care.”

“But things didn’t turn out okay,” I ask, but it comes out sounding more like a statement than a question.

“Things went south. We tried to do an extraction. In Stockton. A boy, a local gangbanger was killed; Bart got arrested for manslaughter but the DA couldn’t make it stick.”

Freddie is silent and I can’t think of a thing to say. He clears his throat.

“Amanda OD’d anyway about a month after that. Whole thing left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.”