Page 32 of At First Catch

A casual joke.

Still, I sit with the word longer than I should.

The marina office blurs around the edges while memory flickers—not a full vision, never a full one anymore, but fragments from childhood that surface unexpectedly when I’m tired.

The smell of bleach in a group home hallway.

A social worker’s perfume.

The scratch of a wool blanket at a foster house where I stayed for four months before another placement opened up somewhere else.

My name written on masking tape across a plastic bin because permanence was too much to ask of a dresser drawer.

I was eight when my parents died.

Old enough to remember being loved.

Young enough that parts of them have faded anyway.

Sometimes I can still hear my mother shrieking in delight if I catch the right scent in a bakery or hear an old song in a grocery store. Sometimes I remember my father’s hands on the steering wheel while he drove us toward the coast every summer, one arm hooked casually over the window ledge while I talked too much in the back seat.

Then the memory fades again before I can hold on to it properly.

Every placement had rules taped somewhere.

Shoes here.

Towels there.

Don’t touch this.

Ask before opening that.

After a while, I stopped unpacking more than I needed. It made leaving easier.

The phone buzzes again.

Lark

Don’t ignore me.

Me

I’m literally answering you.

Lark

Emotionally? Debatable.

I exhale sharply with laughter.

Me

Good night, Lark.

Lark

Good night. And Nolan?