music travelling along the shadowed streets, the occasional burst of laughter coming from a rear courtyard. The people of Kira City rarely slept, and never all at once. Frankie led him to a traders’ hub, streetlamps illuminating a steep curving road, sidewalk benches, and a strip of stores. Some were closed for the night; others were selling ice cream and kebabs and cocktails.
“I lifted my first wallet while giving directions out the front of that bakery.”
He followed her pointing finger. “How old were you?”
She thought back. “Maybe seven?”
“Seven.” He gazed at the bakery as if he could picture it. A young Frankie and an older woman bending over, eyes on Frankie’s pointing finger instead of the wallet being slid from her handbag. “How did you feel about it?”
“Mixed.” Frankie looked down the road, remembering the route she’d taken to get out of sight before the woman realized and shouted after her. Up two shopfronts, left into the back street between the delicatessen and poultry market, and then crouched low and running behind a row of parked cars. But the shouts had never come. No one had chased her. Perhaps the woman hadn’t noticed until she’d reached the end of Frankie’s directions. Perhaps she’d never suspected the little girl at all. “I was scared. Disbelieving that I’d really done it. Exhilarated that I’d gotten away with it and proud to tell my dad. I remember wanting to get better at it so I wouldn’t have to run.”
And she had. Swallowing shame, she led Kris on.
“Growing up,” she said as they walked, “my dad would ask if I had my lunch money. But he would ask after school, not before, and I’d hand over the money I’d shortchanged when buying my lunch on the way to class.”
Then finally, they reached an innocuous street corner on the border of the eastern crest and Kira City center. The place that hurt the most.
She pressed the knuckle of her thumb into her brow, pushing outward, as if she could swipe the pain aside. “This was where I last saw my mother before she left.”
There was nothing to see, but Kris looked around anyway.
“Dad was pulling an all-nighter.” Also known as banging one of his marks. “It was late afternoon. I was walking home from school the long way. I can’t remember why. And I stopped on this street corner, waiting for traffic, and saw that opposite me, Mum was putting a bag in the back of a taxi. She looked pale and scared. She didn’t notice me, and for some reason, I didn’t call out. She got in and the taxi drove away. It took forever to find a gap in traffic to cross, but then I ran home. The apartment looked the same, like maybe she’d gone to get groceries, except her favorite coat was missing and it was the middle of summer. I waited up all night.”
She paused, her breath uneven, as a car swept past them. It was overloaded with teens and one waved out the window, shouting, “Drinks at mine, butterflies!”
Frankie stared, dull inside, while Kris raised a hand in return.
“Dad was so angry when he got home,” she continued, shaking her head at how his fist had put new holes in the plaster walls. “I’ve never . . . He grilled me for days about whether I’d known about it. No joke. He asked me if I’d known my own mother was planning on running away—and what, leaving me behind? Thinking that I might have helped her, but chosen to stay with him? Likelihood of fucking zero.”
“So,” Kris said, and then stopped to pull off his cap and rake fingers through his hair. “She just left you with him?”
Frankie stared at the street sign where the taxi had idled. “Yes.”
“But she’s . . .”
“My mother? Yeah. But apparently I was too much like my dad.” A truth Frankie had forced herself to swallow, and even now, it cut like fish bones in her throat. “She clearly didn’t trust me to keep it secret—not to tell him in the lead up or contact him once we were gone. So she left me behind.” She paused. “Put that back on.”
Kris slid his cap over his head and used his hold on the brim to tip his face down.
“I did everything he told me, and I did it well. I had a temper, just like him.” Frankie had had so many years to think it through, her mother’s defense almost made sense. “She