Chapter 3 CHA

The last bad judgment I ever made, it was in the form of a burst condom against the arm of the couch, cheek to the top of a cushion. It had borne me my daughter. While I loved Gravity above life itself and would never go back on the path of that so-called mistake, my life had changed forever because of it. I'd become a craven, terrified of making mistakes.

This, though, was a mistake. This town. This job. This pointless life.

I ought to have had more, and Grav ought to have had more too. I might always go back. But something fresh alive and mutinous and untamed inside me said I wouldn't. That after getting out, I wouldn't glance back. That I'd continue running. I felt like waking from a coma, years and years. Like I was emerging after sitting on the bottom of a puddly pond.

I grabbed my phone from the edge of the sink in a hurry and called Timothy before even flushing.

"Dot?"

"Please let me say yes."

"I'm saying yes."

"Attagirl."

KLAUS

"Shit, shit, fuck, shit." I banged my forehead against the steering wheel, my ponytail disheveled to meet the rest of my life.

In the rear window, I could see Grav's jaw hanging open, her moon-wide eyes wide as the planet itself. She sat strapped into her car seat, enveloping Mr. Mushroom in her chubby penis-faced pink lovies. The little girl was irretrievably stuck to the toy. A toy from Timothy that had been given to me but had ended up becoming my toddler's transitional object.

"Mommy!" she reprimanded on a gasp. "Grandma will be mad when she hears."

"I'll give you Mommy's soda if you won't tell her." I held out a can of Coke as a bribe.

"Okay!"

Our new life in New York had started on a brokedown car that wouldn't even roll to Pete's Fifth Avenue high-rise building and a twenty-car line blaring and yelling at me.

I fought with my keys, trying to get the engine started. I was actually ten feet away from the doors of Pete's parking garage when Sam decided to plotz.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up." I yanked the handbrake up and down and up again. I was furious. This idiot car.

When I bought Sam two years ago, puffed up with pride at having turned down Pete's charity in the form of a nicer secondhand Silverado, it had a hundred thousand miles on it and rusty doors that liked to jiggle in the wind whenever I drove more than forty miles an hour. But it was five hundred dollars below book, and I couldn't resist the bargain. It left me money for Grav's swim lessons and the monthly book club subscription her preschool teacher recommended. I was starting to see the foolishness of my ways.

I tried to turn the ignition again. Zero. Sam was gone like Armie Hammer's career.

Another ear-piercing explosion of honks echoed through my head. Road ragers pounded their fists out their windows, screaming profanities and trying to cut through the other lane.

"Move this piece of crap outta the road, asshole."

"Learn to drive stick, rice turd."

"D'you see that ass on that woman? She could ride my stick any day of the week."

My face burned with embarrassment. Why me? I wished life would give me fewer lessons and more money.

I crept out of the car, my neck twisted as I looked along the row of furious drivers behind me to try to assess who seemed the least psychopathic and could perhaps be bribed to assist me in shoving my car toward the parking gate.

"Mommy, I wanna get out," Gravity whined, her pink Skechers kicking the seat in front of her.

"In a minute, honey."

"I'm boooored."

More honking. More cursing. Fifth Avenue was a four-lane street, gung-ho lined with midrise buildings on the west and Central Park on the east. One lane was reserved for buses, and one was jammed with trucks. That left two lanes, and I was taking up one of them.

I need help with my car to this gate." I gestured with my arms in the general direction of the building. I was sweating and rubbing under my navy-blue sweatshirt and loose mom jeans. My hair was a mess. If I were a crier, I'd be crying.

"Sounds like a you problem." The guy behind me spat phlegm through his window.

Welp, I'm not in Maine anymore, that's for sure.

"Unless you want to pay for it." My driver looked at me gratefully, up and down.

"Sure." I leaned forward, grinning blankly at him. "Do you cover knees to the nuts and sucker punches?"

"Bitch," he growled, closing his window in my face.

"Mommy!" Gravity shrieked louder. "I wanna get out. Out. Out. Out."

"Just a sec, sweetie."

"I want soda!"

Trembling, I pulled out my phone from the back pocket of my jeans. I couldn't call Mama or Pete-I was so desperate to do this alone. Desperate not to be this needy, flailing, train wreck of a woman who couldn't seem to get anything right.

I called the insurance company instead, my whole body breaking out in hives.

This was a blunder. I should never have arrived here. Seriously, what was the point of coming here? I couldn't even look after myself when I stayed with my mother back home; New York City was twenty sizes larger than me.

I was strutting back and forth behind my trunk, awaiting the representative to respond to my call, when Sam's back door burst open. It took a moment to comprehend what was transpiring. Grav had endured enough following the eight-hour road trip, unbuckled herself from the backseat independently, and now she was slipping out, tumbling flat on her ass in the busy street and rolling into the next lane.

"Jesus!" I yelled frantically, dropping my phone on the ground.