That's a bald-faced lie! I'd have remembered something like that. This whole business is your own fault. I told you not to trust the D.A., and you didn't listen, so you did all that craziness last year." "When I was twenty-two?" "Don't be a martyr, Alex. I'm on your side." "How many times do I have to tell you that, Mom?" "You said it enough times for everyone in town to know it." She laughed, the sound cutting in my ears like glass. "I'm on your side, Alex. You know I'm on your side." I didn't answer her. Instead, I called my aunt. She told me this was crazy talk. She never heard of anyone named Jax who worked for the D.A.'s office. She also told me that if I didn't tell her what had happened I couldn't stay in my room tonight, and that I had to stop this. I told her I already knew that. I told her it was all about her. Then she hung up. My mother, whose name is Susan Elizabeth Hightower, said that we were sisters, but we are nothing alike. She has her own side business cleaning houses, and she's been cleaning my place since I moved out. Her mom was here until she died, and my mother moved in a few months ago. My mom is always telling me how we could have used some help before my mother got sick, and how my father worked so hard, too hard, that he got cancer, and what a shame it was that she didn't know he was sick. She says that she took over his business after his death so I could go to college and still have some semblance of a life. At the same time, she never lets me forget that she has done that by herself since my father died. She still cries sometimes, especially at night. She's been through a lot. My mother was the second wife of Albert Hightower, a janitor at the town hall, who died before I was born. My father, Albert's only child, was the middle child, between an older sister, who was born after he was gone, and a younger brother. He was born on the wrong side of the tracks. He was the son of a maid and a farmhand on the outskirts of Elmwood, a small town near the Tennessee state line. My father never wanted to talk about his childhood. He told me that his family lived across from the dump and that he used to go with his brother, who would rob people outside the grocery store, and his sister, who took whatever they stole inside the local bar. They were all still alive when I was young, and they never visited my father when he was in jail. He says they would have nothing to do with his drug habit. I don't know why he never told me about his past, but I think it's for the best that I didn't know. This town has a past, too, and I don't ever want to know about that. It's the past I try to forget and the stories I don't tell. When my father got married the first time, it was to a middle-aged woman named Edna. Edna was from a town about fifteen miles away. She was young at the time, but after his wife died, she wasn't young anymore. She had two kids and her third child was still on the way. Edna met my father while she was going to night school to become a nursing assistant. She would go to his apartment late at night after she got off work. At first, he wanted nothing to do with her. It took months of him walking in on her in her nightgown. One night, he told her to go out on the porch and she'd be out of her misery. But it wasn't enough. She kept coming back, and eventually he gave in. He tried to quit several times. But no matter how many times he left Edna, he would always come back. When he was there, Edna could barely do the smallest task, but he treated her like a queen, and he got into everything she did. In a few months, they were married. Edna couldn't believe that her life had changed so much that quickly. But my father did love my mother more than Edna ever did. He knew that she had been with her first husband, John, a schoolteacher, when he died. There's not much that happens in this town that my father doesn't hear about. In his free time, he watched the paper and heard everything that happened in the town and what it had to do with the people who lived there. When he was younger, he was a local bad boy, but that's not why he got in trouble with the law. It was a woman named Sarah who got him into the drug scene, and after he lost everything, he did a lot of drugs. It happened one day after my parents got married when he found out about the woman. He was sitting at his desk in the small office he used in the barbershop that he took over from my grandfather. Edna was downstairs and my father was alone in his office. When he heard the bell over the door, he thought it was the barbershop's regular customer. I never understood what Sarah had that my father wanted that much, or why he left Edna, but when he came home he had his own home and a new life. His first wife gave him a lot of things that she could afford—her home, her furniture and appliances, the money from her brother's savings account. But she couldn't give him a thing but her baby, because when Edna went to the hospital the doctor told her the baby didn't stand a chance of surviving. So, he never had a baby with Edna. After that day, he was all business. That afternoon, he told my mother he was going to get some groceries. A few minutes later, he came into the barbershop and made a phone call. He was angry, shaking. "Are you fucking crazy, Alex? You've got to keep your hands off that whore or you'll end up in jail. You understand that?" I don't know what happened next because my mother doesn't understand why he was so upset. But he got up and put his gun in his coat pocket, and then he left. Later that night, he was in the alley behind the barbershop. I heard the shot, and I thought I did it. I didn't know it was Edna until my father came back. He told my mother that Edna was dead. "It's too late to save her," he said. "But it's not too late for you and Alex. You've got to stay away from that woman. She's bad news." Then he called an ambulance, and the next day we moved into an apartment. Edna was buried two days later. I've asked my mother a thousand times why my father killed Edna, but she never told me. I've never asked my father, because I didn't want to know what happened and what really made him do it. Instead, he started drinking, and I began to see a different side to him. I thought he was angry because the baby was born with a birth defect. He wouldn't tell me about it, though. He told me there was a reason that he didn't have a child, and I never asked what that reason was. I called Edna on the day after she died. Her body was buried that afternoon. I was just a little girl, and I needed somebody to help me. She wouldn't, though, and so I didn't visit her, even though I thought I knew her better than anybody else in the world. Now she's all gone, and it would be easier if she was dead. My father died while he was having one of his attacks. This happened about a year ago, and since then I've been working as a bartender in a bar that's a few miles from home. That's where I met my friend, Jax. The last thing he said to me was "My brother's in trouble again, and it's going to be your fault." I don't know why he was so angry. My father's been in prison for twenty-two years now, so he must not be out to get me. It's not that I can't take care of myself—I've got a gun in my back pocket right now—but I'm in trouble. When my father died, I was only a teenager. He never trusted the government. He said it was always against him. So, I got myself in trouble with the police. I'm not exactly sure why I did what I did, but I know that I was high when I did it. I got scared, so I did what my father said. I ran and got away. But running never works. I get a little farther each time. So, this guy, Jax, has to tell my mother something else, because he can't be the only one who's done this to me. I know what I'm going to do. I know that I'm going to walk to the other side of town to meet my friends in New York. Then I'm going to run to the ocean. And if there is an ocean. Before this goes any further, I want to warn you. WALKED THE TOWN at eight o'clock that