Free Dead Weight by Susan Rogers Cooper

was just sitting down to a platter of eggs, bacon and two donuts, and still wearing her nightclothes (yes, my biological child).
    ‘Too much noise,’ I said through the crack in the door.
    Graham looked up. ‘You sick?’ he inquired, milk and cornflakes visible when he spoke.
    ‘Yes!’ I said and slammed the door.
    I awoke again at the ringing of the phone. I ignored it. Five minutes later Megan came into the room.
    ‘Mom, that was Mrs McClure. She wants me over there and she’s coming over here. I have to get dressed and I would suggest you do the same,’ my darling daughter said.
    ‘Excuse me?’ I said, in my most haughty mother-getting-uppity voice.
    ‘It’s just a suggestion!’ she said and left the room in a huff.
    I was not in a good mood. I require a full eight hours of sleep to become, once again, a human being. Give me less than that and the result is not pretty. I was sitting on the edge of the bed contemplating my feet when I heard Megan shout out from the front door, ‘Mom, I’m leaving!’
    I nodded my agreement and thought again of standing up. Before that thought could go from my brain to my feet, the doorbell rang, I heard the door open and Trisha say, ‘E.J., you in your room? I’m coming back!’
    And she followed the word with the deed. I looked up to see her standing at the door to my bedroom. ‘What happened to you?’ she asked.
    And well she might. Standing before me was a cute little woman, blonde hair curled and combed, face painted and plucked, and clothes just so. Standing before her was a not-so-cute bigger woman, with newly colored red hair standing straight up in every direction, face still wrinkled from the sheet creases, and only one button functioning on ten-year-old flannel pajamas.
    ‘Willis and Luna were waiting for Berta and me when we walked in last night,’ I told her.
    ‘Oh, shit!’ she said, and came to sit down on the bed. ‘What happened?’
    ‘It wasn’t pretty,’ I said. ‘Bottom line, Luna arrested her and she’s now in lock-up. Your husband is supposed to be trying to get her out.’
    ‘He is?’ she said, eyebrows arched.
    ‘He didn’t tell you?’ I asked.
    ‘Tom doesn’t tell me about his clients. He considers even their identify privileged.’
    I contemplated the thought of a man keeping his mouth shut. Amazing.
    ‘E.J.?’ Trisha said, breaking my reverie.
    ‘Huh?’
    Trisha sighed and turned toward the door. ‘I’ll make coffee,’ she said.
    ‘Huh?’
    The coffee was strong and hot and it made the agony of putting on clothes worth it. I took the cup in two hands and sat down at the kitchen table, only then realizing that I’d put on my ‘big’ jeans – from before I lost the thirty-five pounds – and not my ‘new’ jeans. As I sat, the butt of the jeans slid down and I ended up sitting on my panties. I was actually quite proud of that.
    In a halting, slightly confused and roundabout diatribe, I told Trisha what we’d learned about Berta Harris the night before.
    ‘So what do we do now?’ Trisha asked.
    ‘Umm,’ I said.
    ‘E.J., that’s not an answer,’ Trisha said.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said, holding the coffee mug tightly. ‘What time is it?’
    ‘Ten o’clock,’ she said.
    ‘What’s the temp?’
    Trisha shook her head. ‘You don’t want to know.’
    ‘How bad?’ I asked. Along with the drought, we’d been having record-breaking high temps with so far this summer thirty days of plus-one-hundred-degrees temperatures.
    ‘Ninety-two,’ she said quietly.
    I said a very bad word.
    Trisha stood up. ‘Come on, let’s go to the police station. See what Tom’s doing about getting Berta out of jail.’
    She grabbed an arm and pulled. I reluctantly stood up.
    MEGAN
    I saw Mom and Mrs McClure pull out of the driveway in Mrs McClure’s car, one of those Toyota hybrids that are really cute and, you know, save the earth and stuff. As soon as they were gone, I set the girls (Tabitha and Tamara, btw) down in front