No, was her first thought. Not again. For a few groggy seconds, it was nighttime, and she was back in her house, alone with her mother’s roaming in the frangible, untrustworthy quiet nighttime always brought. She sat up in bed. Her mother’s bed. She saw that she was fully dressed, and the present came back to her in a rush. It was nighttime; she was in her house; but her mother was gone. Clare was flooded first with relief and then with guilt at the relief. “I don’t mean I don’t want her here,” she whispered to whatever or whomever might be in the business of listening to and granting desires. She couldn’t risk any misunderstandings. When she’d opened her front door to the man in the tiny glasses, her hope that her mother would come home for Christmas had, with a mocking sneer, deserted her. So when she heard the door slam, the idea that it could be her mother returning did not even enter her mind. When she was awake enough to worry, her first thought was that her father had driven separately; Teo and Cornelia might be getting into Teo’s car and leaving her with her father.
