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HOLT Three weeks later…“Holt, Holt…wake up! It’s time for a squirrel hunt!”
My eyes open with the expectation of finding my mother, standing over me, her hair in two long braids, her eyes bright with adventure.
But only slices of moonlight and the shadows of overlarge furniture occupy the dark beyond my bed. My mother is not here, and even if she was, we’re not at our country house which is the only place we’re allowed to hunt squirrels. We learned our lesson about the squirrel hunts in New Haven the first time we tried it. We got picked up by the local police less than an hour after leaving our apartment building. That was the first time Dad posted an additional nighttime guard at the lobby elevator.
But not the last.
I hadn’t been downstairs since mom returned from her latest “res
