He was sending it to somebody. He was making a joke of her.
I opened my door.
“Jeffrey.”
She still had not turned around. I do not know how she knew. She just knew. She always knew.
I closed the door.
The powdered sugar on the lemon bars had melted clear. They were not bars anymore. They were a pan of something yellow and sliding.
Here is what I have to tell you about me now. Because the rest of this story does not mean much if I leave it out, and I have left it out of too many things already.
My mother worked nights for the Kessler County Sheriff’s Office for thirty-four years. Eleven at night to seven in the morning, in a room in the courthouse basement with no window. She started in 1987, when I was two years old. She retired in 2021.
She was the night dispatcher.
