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myself into a bit of a situation,” Max began, as he always did. He didn’t slur his words, but she could hear the alcohol in his voice.
    She sat up in bed and drew her knees up to her chest, hoping the ringing phone hadn’t woken Chase. She gripped the phone so tightly her hands hurt. “What’s wrong?” she whispered, even though the bedroom door was closed and she felt sure that Chase was asleep.
    “I’m in jail.”
    She heard muffled voices behind him, could almost see the fluorescent lights that bathed the jail in a green tint she equated with the color of nausea, the faces of the despondent people she would pass as she walked into the station to bail him out. Again.
    “Kinda got caught in the cross fire between two angry guys.” She eyed the closed bedroom door and thought about how good it was that this time someone was here to stay with Emma. Odd that Chase was slowly offering her a sense of stability she hadn’t felt in a long time, the chance to stop doing things alone. This month, he’d even given her money to put toward the rent payment and had paid for the groceries several times. Tonight Emma could stay in her nice warm bed and not have her sleep interrupted while Macy bailed out Max.
    The last time Max had called in the middle of the night, Avis asked her, “Why don’t you have your mom go get him when he pulls this stuff?”
    “It’s part of our little game we play,” Macy had responded. “She pretends like she doesn’t know about Max, and we pretend we’re keeping it a secret from her.”
    The truth was, Macy just couldn’t bear to see the hurt in her mother’s eyes. She would do just about anything to protect her from that. So she dragged her daughter out of bed with promises of a midnight donut run just as soon as they picked up Uncle Max. Emma thought it was a grand adventure, that Macy was “the funnest mommy ever.” After all, no one else in her class got to go get donuts in the middle of the night. Emma never noticed that Macy never ate a donut, that she found it impossible to eat when her stomach was tied up in knots. Yet Max always said he was starving and ordered two cream-filled donuts before going back to her house to pass out on her couch, a ring of chocolate lining his lips like a child’s as he slept.
    “Are they letting you out?” she asked Max, finger combing her hair as she spoke, her fingers catching in the snarls created by Chase’s hands and her too-brief bit of sleep.
    “Yeah. Just need a ride. And money. You know the pin number.” One of the more depressing parts of their arrangement was that Macy had her own copy of Max’s bank card and was adept at making midnight withdrawals to retrieve the money he needed to get out. She always told Emma it was for the donuts they were buying. Max was one of the only peopleshe’d ever heard of who actually earmarked money for what he called “legal matters.” Macy had told him he should just call it what it was: bail money.
    She sighed. “Okay. I’m on my way.”
    “Is what’s-his-face there or are you going to bring Little Bit?”
    “He’s here, so I don’t have to wake her. She’s got school in the morning, you know.”
    “Didn’t you learn anything the first time?” he chided.
    She started to inform him that Chase was sleeping on the couch, but decided to go the indignant route instead. “That’s a funny question to ask me, Max. You’re not exactly in a position to judge.”
    “Nope. Guess I’m not.”
    When the dial tone buzzed in her ear, she told herself that it was because the call had timed out, not that he had hung up on the one person he was counting on to rescue him.

five
    S he made her way through the darkened streets, her headlights shining on the empty road ahead of her, thinking of the other times she’d gone to get Max in the dead of night. There were the numerous times he’d called because he was too drunk to drive. The time he’d been picked up in a sting at a drug house where