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with no word from her, though, I’d finally forced myself to go into her room and look through her stuff. Sure enough, her emergency stash—three hundred bucks in cash, last I’d checked—was gone, as were her saving-bonds certificates, her makeup, and, most telling, her bathing suit and favorite summer robe. Wherever she was headed, it was warm.
    I had no idea when she’d really left, since we hadn’t exactly been getting along. We hadn’t exactly not been, either. But that fall, the hands-off approach we’d both cultivated had spilled over from just a few days here and there to all the time. Also, she’d stopped going to work—sleeping when I left for school in the morning, sleeping when I returned and headed out to Commercial, and usually out once I returned after all the deliveries were done—so it wasn’t like we had a lot of chances to talk. Plus, the rare occasions she was home and awake, she wasn’t alone.
    Most times, when I saw her boyfriend Warner’s beat-up old Cadillac in the driveway, I’d park and then walk around to my bedroom window, which I kept unlocked, and let myself in that way. It meant I had to brush my teeth with bottled water, and made washing my face out of the question, but these were small prices to pay to avoid Warner, who filled the house with pipe smoke and always seemed to be sweating out whatever he’d drunk the day before. He’d park himself on the couch, beer in hand, his eyes silently following me whenever I did have to cross in front of him. He’d never done anything I could point to specifically, but I believed this was due not to innocence but to lack of opportunity. I did not intend to provide him with one.
    My mother, however, loved Warner, or so she said. They’d met at Halloran’s, the small bar just down the street from the yellow house where she went sometimes to drink beer and sing karaoke. Unlike my mother’s other boyfriends, Warner wasn’t the meaty, rough-around-the-edges type. Instead, in his standard outfit of dark pants, cheap shirt, deck shoes, hat with captain’s insignia, he looked like he’d just stepped off a boat, albeit not necessarily a nice one. I wasn’t sure whether he had a nautical past and was pining for it, or was hoping for one still ahead. Either way, he liked to drink and seemed to have some money from somewhere, so for my mom he was perfect.
    These days, when I thought about my mom, I sometimes pictured her on the water. Maybe she and Warner had gotten that old Cadillac all the way to Florida, like they’d always talked about doing, and were now on the deck of some boat, bobbing on the open sea. This was at least a prettier picture than the one I actually suspected, the little bit of denial I allowed myself. It wasn’t like I had a lot of time for fantasies anyway.
    When she left, it was mid-August, and I still had nine months before I turned eighteen and could live alone legally. I knew I had a challenge ahead of me. But I was a smart girl, and I thought I could handle it. My plan was to keep the job at Commercial until Robert, the owner, caught on to my mom’s absence, at which point I’d have to find something else. As far as the bills went, because our names were identical I could access my mom’s account for whatever paychecks—which were direct-deposited—I was able to earn. I figured I was good, at least for the time being. As long as I kept out of trouble at school, the one thing that I knew for sure would blow my cover, no one had to know anything was different.
    And who knew? It could even have worked out if the dryer hadn’t broken. But while my short-term plans might have changed, the long-term goal remained the same as it had been for as long as I could remember: to be free. No longer dependent or a dependent, subject to the whim or whimsy of my mother, the system, or anyone else, the albatross always weighing down someone’s neck. It didn’t really matter whether I served out the time at the yellow house or