by Richard Weems

I told Jake how I had been blowing off support payments so Marjorie would know she had no control over my life anymore. She threatened to keep Trudy from me altogether, so I left her long, angry messages: “Pick up, damn it, pick up for Christ’s sake, damn it, pick up the damn phone.” Trudy was four, and for almost half of her life I had been little more than an occasional babysitter who cut her pizza into thumb-thick rectangles.