I smell her before I see her enter my bedroom. The grey smoke always precedes her, announcing her presence like an old-fashioned gentleman. I don't move the comic from its spot in front of my eyes.

Maybe if I don't see her, she won't really be there.

Of course, it doesn't work. There's a timid knock and a pregnant pause before anything else happens.

"Light?" She says it like a question, like maybe it's not my name, like maybe I've been replaced. I don't answer.

She moves across the room and sits on the edge of my bed. The springs groan in protest. "Light, honey?" she tries again.

I wait for something more. This is where she usually gives up, sensing I want to be alone, and goes to light up in the kitchen or wherever. I wait for it to happen, as rehearsed. But there is no indication that she'll follow suit.

A long, heavy sigh. Another creak of rusty iron. Her tired voice, surprisingly substantial. "Please don't do this, Light. Don't shut me out again."

Her plea falls on deaf ears. I turn a page without reading a single letter.

"This time wasn't my fault,"  she insists. "Jake set me up--he tipped off a policeman, let him know I'd be doing a job tonight. If I'd been a minute earlier, they would have caught me and you'd be visiting your Momma behind bulletproof glass."

"Wouldn't that be better?" I can't hold it in any longer. The book falls to one side, a page bending beneath the weight of it all. My mother is like that page, I realize. She's always bending.

I turn to look at the sorry creature that is my mother. She used to be beautiful. Her dark hair once curled and floated around her perfectly made-up face. Her skin kept a rosy glow, but still looked fair and smooth. Her jade eyes are faintly marked by the laughs of another time. A time when she was loved and knew how to love back.

She used to be beautiful. Jake has ruined her.

She has ruined herself.

"Better? Seeing me in prison?" Her mouth, carefully coated in glossy red lipstick, forms a scarlet O.

I shrug, my eyes never leaving hers. She breaks the contact first. "I didn't realize you thought that way," she whispers, hurt, but understanding. She thinks she gets why. It frustrates me that she doesn't know at all.

"I don't," I admit. "But I'm being realistic."

"Pessimist," she teases, but we both know it's a weak attempt at humor.

I lean back against the pillow to stare at the cracked ceiling. Shapes jump out at me and I take absent notes of each one. It's a game we used to play, my mother and my five-year-old self. Not every memory is a bad one, I suppose.

"I'll have to stay here a few days," she tells me.

A star falling to Earth. A smiley face with one eye.

"It won't be bad, really. More like a vacation. Just the two of us." I don't know who she's convincing.

A lopsided heart. Spongebob and Patrick sitting on a hill.

"This won't happen again," she promises.

An empty woman with tangled hair and dead eyes. A quiet boy sleeping alone in a broken house.

"I'm sure it won't," I reply blankly. My eyes close and the pictures disappear. Reality crashes down, shredding my safety blanket of forgotten promises.

My mother smiles, relieved, and stands. "This will be good for us," she continues before leaving. "Give us a chance to reconnect. I've missed you, baby."

I wait until she's gone to answer. "Miss you too. Mom."

My fingers lift the book. Underneath, a phone is already dialed, waiting to make the call it knows it must. I smooth the bent page as I listen for an end to the ringing.

"911. What is your emergency?"

The cracks form storm clouds made of grey cigarette smoke and glossy red lipstick. I breathe it in just one more time before letting them rain.

"Hello, Officer. I heard you were looking for my mother."