The French have a phrase for it, and it’s this: l’esprit d’escalier, the spirit of the stair. Well, Joan is on the freeway when it hits her – I should’ve told the little cow at check-in that I’d find seventy dollars for one kilogram of baggage when THAT LITTLE BITCH grew a HEART!

Yes!

…Instead, tears, shame and incoherence – and blank helplessness as she heard her flight depart, still waiting for the check-in manager. After that, Joan just wanted to get out of there.

She takes an off-ramp at random, parks on a side street and rests her forehead on the steering wheel of her pickup. Her tickets are gone. Her rent deposit is gone, spent buying her tickets.

Christmas is coming, and the father of their festive season. If Joan has to explain about the house to them, if she must spend another happy holiday in the chaos they bring, with their ‘friends’— Her door pushes open and she walks, for air, but then keeps walking into the dark.

It is a race. To find something good, before they find her.