It was just an ordinary night until the phone rang for the hundredth time and it was a personal call for her. No one ever called her.
She would like to have said ``There must be some mistake. My son would never have done a thing like that.'' But she knew better.
``I have to leave,'' she told Pilar, ``Scott's with the police.'' It would be all round the factory floor before she reached the parking lot.
Her son sat at a bare table in a bare room. A cop sat by him saying something intense, his face close to the child's. Such a small body to hold so much anger.
``You know you can't stop me loving you,'' she said.
She looked at the cop. ``We'll need a free lawyer.''
Years later in another town, another state with two new children and a husband she would not allow to leave, she got the word that Scott was coming home.
He stood in the doorway all pale and tall and strange and she hugged him tight and they both wept big tears while two small children and their dad watched from the kitchen.
``You know you can't stop me loving you,'' she said.
In the kitchen Scott shook hands with each half sibling. Heads nodded in greeting.
In bed that night their dad said ``I can't have that kid in the house.''
She said nothing.
``He's as bad as he ever was, I can tell. He has to leave.''
She said nothing.
Scott poured coffee at the stove. A barbed wire bracelet tattooed on his right wrist. Today he was to take his GEDs. He was smiling.
``This is like real family,'' he said.
``It is,'' she answered, ``and you're part of it.''
He stayed a couple of months. He got a job. Made new friends. Bought a car and rented an apartment. She saw him less and less. She had doubts about his life. His new friends.
On her birthday he showed up with flowers and a gift of expensive perfume. He stayed for the cake then said, ``Mom, I gotta go.''
She put her arms around him in the doorway.
``You know you can't stop me ...''
``Sure mom, I know...''
And he was gone.