Page 73 of Fever Dream

Alice comes to pick me up.Her face looks like the best thing I’ve seen, all lit up in the morning light.I feel a sudden jolt looking at her, standing with her back against the car.She was smoking a cigarette, looking as calm and collected as a free woman could possibly look.

“Where to?”she asks as she opens my door.“Mexico?”

“Don’t be silly.”I take one last look at the building and feel a chill down my spine.“To Charles’s parents’ house.I want to see my children.”

“I figured you’d say that.I gassed up, though, just in case.”

She drives me straight to my mother-in-law’s house, where she packs up the children’s things so we can take them home.

My in-laws are not happy.They want me to stay with them.They practically beg me not to leave.“We could be at war,” my father-in-law says.“It’s better if we stay together.”

“At least until Charles is home,” my mother-in-law tells me.

“We’re going,” I say.I sound like a little girl, my voice shaky and small.I made Alice drive away.

As soon as she pulled out of the drive, I began to cry.

“I’m not going to cry,” I say to myself.“I will not cry.”But I cannot stop the tears.They stream out of me just as they had when I was a little girl and I’d get in trouble.I am inconsolable.

But I am free.

As Alice drives, I keep wondering what evidence the administrator had been referring to.I promise myself that when I get home, I will phone the officers and ask what information they have.But I also figure Charles will know, and he needs to be the first person I call.