Gathering Dark

and our lives were not nearing the ridiculous ideal I’d constructed at all. Jamie loved his foster mother and father, friends from my former life, and he was awkward at best and scared at worst with me. I’d stayed out of his life to protect myself, but in doing so I’d landed him with a mother he didn’t know but was forced to make space for in his already confusing and tumultuous young world.
As I lifted my hand to knock on the door of Jamie’s house, I heard the boy somewhere inside the spacious home, his voice a high whine. “… want to go to Benny’s house! It’s not fair! Everyone is going except me!”
“There will be other parties, Jamie. This is more important.”
“It’s not important! It’s stupid!”
I knocked, swallowing hard. Sasha opened the door, wearing a paisley apron. Perfect bangs. She was that kind of housewife, the kind who ran a blog where she taught other bored white mommies how to make cookies in the shape of action heroes and cartoon characters. Something was baking in the house somewhere, the scent of cinnamon and vanilla wafting out the door. Jamie was in the hall, his face dark with dread.
“Hello, buddy!” I said, smiling.
“Hey.” He sighed and wandered off.
“Someone’s having a little tantrum this morning.” Sasha hugged me with one arm, made a mwah noise next to my ear. “It’ll wear off. There’s a party down the street and he wants to go, but a boy needs to hang out with his mother.”
I was the “mother” and Sasha was the “mom.” I didn’t like it but I didn’t have the right, or the power, to change it, and Sasha had been good about leaving Jamie’s surname as Harbour, as I’d requested. Sasha had raised Jamie since he was an infant. She and her husband had unquestioningly accepted my baby so that he didn’t fall into the hands of strangers in foster care, strangers who might have adopted him and insisted I never see him again. Accepting that I was Jamie’s mother, but that he would call me “Blair,” was just one of a million heartaches I’d had to face following the moment I pulled the trigger of a gun and took a man’s life. You don’t tell your mother you love her, or confide your secrets in her, or go to her for help. That stuff belongs to the mom. I followed Sasha into the high-ceilinged home, looking for my son, my chest tight with the anticipation of holding him.
“Jamie, we can drop in to the party if you want,” I said, finding him slumped on a leather couch. “Let’s go get ice cream and then pay a visit on the way back.”
“Whatever,” he said. “All the good food will be gone by then, probably.”
“That’s your last ‘whatever.’” Sasha pointed the finger of doom at the boy. “You get one per day and you’ve just used it, bucko. Now get up and hug Blair, then get your stuff. And if I find a Nintendo Switch in your pocket when you come back out here I’m going to put it in the lockup.”
The “lockup” was Sasha’s underwear drawer, a place for overused electronics and confiscated forbidden magazines. I received an awkward hug from Jamie and then stood, face burning, while Sasha saw to her Iron Man cookies in the huge kitchen.
“Oh my god,” she said suddenly, while adjusting the temperature on the high-tech oven. “You’ll never believe this. I’ve been clearing out some old stuff from the basement. I found some photos of us.” She pointed with an oven mitt to a stack on the counter. “Such a blast from the past.”
I went to the stack of photos and looked through them. Pool party shots. Some extravagant drunken gathering or another. Brentwood society ladies liked expensive white wine and deep, devastating conversations poolside while the children played, and we’d find any excuse to do it. Someone’s promotion. A kid’s graduation. A marriage, a divorce. We’d had a party for a dog’s birthday once. I spotted myself at Sasha’s side in the cabana in her yard, laughing, drinking sparkling water with lemon, my baby bump hardly showing. I tried to guess how many days passed between the taking of the photograph and the night I murdered a man. Maybe two months. I put the photos down.
“Look at my hair.” She leaned over. “Crazy, right?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
“What about?”
“I was robbed two nights ago.” I glanced at the hallway to make sure Jamie was out of earshot. “They got my car and all my cash. Every cent. I snuck onto a bus to get here.”
“Jesus Christ.” Sasha jerked away, as though from an offensive odor. “How is that even possible?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Blair,” she sighed. “Honestly. This is not the kind of behavior that fills me with confidence about you getting more one-on-one time with Jamie.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me correctly,” I said carefully. “I was robbed. It’s not my behavior we’re talking about.”
“You’re the one who insists on living in the badlands,” Sasha said, waving in the general direction of the southeast. “I’ve told you before, someone up here would let you live in their guest house, where it’s safe. I could make some calls.”
“Accommodation is great but I’ve got to eat. No one within miles of here would hire me.”
“They’d hire you in the house, Blair.” Sasha rolled her eyes. “It would have to be someone I knew, but I could swing it.”
“That sounds hellish for me,” I said. “And you. What are you going to say? ‘This is my murderous ex-con friend, mother of my child. Will you have her as live-in help? It might be dangerous, but imagine how fun it will be, staring at her and whispering about her while she brings us drinks.’”
“So what do you need?” She looked me over. “Cash and to borrow the car to take Jamie to the pier, I suppose.”
“I can pay you back in a couple of