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Show Blue Run/44 "Your daddy passed, Joey. He had an accident" Joey tapped the mummy glass, let his chin fall. "I know Mama," he said "He was sweet and loved you with all his heart" He shook his head, I could see his face in the glass. "No he didn't." My mascara was running. Children know the tmth-their hearts don't lie. "He'd do anything for you " "He hurt you." "Hove him." Joey said, "I hate him." And then he was gone. Disappeared. Right then and there with the old security guard clutching his hernia and goddamning the world to hell and my mascara mnning all down my blouse, Joey simply vanished. Out in the heat, past the swings and slides and sandboxes and big sharp-smelling sweetgum trees, women holding children tight to their chests, we searched for my baby, but he wasn't there. Inside again, frantic, my heart beating the way it does just before you die, no Joey. In the mummy room the thought floored me-Joey'd somehow crawled into the mummy's wrappings, he was in there suffocating. Somebody called the police and they got me in the cop car, and I was crazy. I was shaking all over, the terror under the fillings in my teeth. I can taste it there this second. It came when Jimmy was killed, when the policeman knocked on the front door at two a.m , and I heard him out there shuffling his feet, and turned the porch light on and looked at him through the peephole, saw him playing with his wedding band, and the fear came down on me and crawled into my stomach where it's grown ever since. Joey was gone, he'd disappeared into the other world he'd visited while I painted pictures in |