Excerpt

Liam was six when he started to shimmy up the doorway moldings. “Look Mom!” he’d cry from the ceiling. “No hands!”

Lena tried to discourage him. “Why don’t you play hockey or soccer like a normal kid?” she would ask, but there was no stopping the climb that carried her son through boyhood and adolescence, from doorways to signposts to the roof of their house and all the other roofs in their neighbourhood. The taller he grew, the greater the ascent. The therapist said he would grow out of it. Lena was not so sure, but she carried on as single mothers do.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she confessed to the police when they came knocking on her door –– incriminating words that she later denied. Although she was angry with her idiot son, Lena had no intention of testifying against him. She claimed to be ignorant about his YouTube video, the one responsible for the new silver strands in her hair, the same video that had blown up on social media

The police forced her to watch the footage, all eyes upon her. “Do you recognize your son’s baseball cap?” they asked.