They let Shannon out in the middle of an early spring day. The swirling air is humid, common for that time of year, and it crowds around her, hugging her tight. In the processing office her throat constricts; the only thing between her and the rest of society is a stack of paperwork and a prayer that Daniel will show up.

Tutwiler Women’s Correctional Facility—affectionately called “Tut,” if you’re a lifer or an in-and-outer—looms above the tiny office, casting a shadow over Shannon and the sticky brown waiting chairs. She crosses her arms over her chest, legs bouncing against the garbage bag of personal items that swings from her middle and pointer fingers.

To wear jeans again feels strange, and every time Shannon looks at her legs, she expects to see prison khakis. The blue fabric gathers around her knees and ankles, the waistband hugging her hips, loose. Daniel won’t be surprised, if he gets around to driving over from Mountain Brook. Shannon imagines that she looks the way she feels: like shit.

With a sweet, mousy demeanor, the secretary pokes her head out of the booth. “Mrs. White, are you sure you don’t need us to call you a cab?” Above the mess of clipboards, her cat-shaped earrings dangle, as if rubbing in the fact that she pretends she doesn’t work in a prison, that she never has to worry about tabby cats getting yanked out in a fight. All she has to see are former inmates in regular clothes, ready to get shipped off to the next place where they can take up space.

“He’ll come,” Shannon says. Daniel always does; he still cares, even though he promised he would never bother again. It’s like that with them: her taking and taking, and him continuing to give.

Itching to move, Shannon pushes up out of the seat and slides through the double doors, its steel edges clattering together behind her as she crouches, then sits, on the concrete steps. She stretches her legs out and sifts through her garbage bag of stuff. What she had on her person eight months ago doesn’t add up to much. First comes a handful of loose cigarettes and a white lighter—bad luck, according to her college roommate. Underneath that are a mess of papers and a tube of lavender-scented body wash she thought she could sneak in, back when she wanted to hold on to whatever humanity she could.

She eyes the “No Smoking” sign behind her, fishes out the least-crushed cigarette, and lights it, luck be damned. She’s been tired of Tut since she stepped into it, but now that she’s out, it doesn’t feel real.

Daniel is coming, though. Shannon doesn’t know quite what she’ll say when they lock eyes, but she hopes that whatever she comes up with will be enough to make up for all those months spent apart. If she had the guts, she’d prostrate herself on the sidewalk and beg for his forgiveness, admit her guilt, tell him everything she ever kept from him, starting with the first day they met. She would do anything to live her life again, to have him and Samantha back.

Unfortunately, there’s no point anymore. A jury of her peers decided exactly what she needed to do, before Daniel could.

The sun beats down on her as she leans back, puffing on the cigarette. A soft, secret part of her hopes he’ll bring Samantha with him, but she knows he’d never want her around a place like Tut. She imagines her daughter’s round, baby face, how her jawline and cheekbones have probably lengthened, how she changed while her mother was in jail.

Holding smoke in her lungs, Shannon lets the thought run out of her body. Beyond the wide parking lot’s perimeter, the trees put out invisible steam in the baking heat. As the state gears up for another summer, the weather takes Shannon back to the summer before, when she tore her family apart with her own two hands.

Gravel crunches in the office driveway. Instincts lighting up, Shannon stands up, putting the garbage bag behind her legs, as if she could hide it. All around her, it’s as if the world stands still, gripping her with invisible claws.

Daniel’s car is new—shiny on the rims. He probably got it with the money he made from selling her hatchback. It ambles forward, then pauses, considering whether to keep going and let her in. Eventually it pushes onward and comes to a stop next to her.

If she could scroll back through her mind and find something to say, she would. Words fail her; she’s staring Daniel down through tinted windows.

He doesn’t bother to get out. Given what she did, where she’s been, there’s no reason for Shannon to expect him to try. If he were going to jump out and hug her like she wanted, he would have tried before, at visitation. He would have done something other than stare at her, at her cuffs and jumpsuit, across the table like a stranger.

Still she prayed for it, for his hands and for his smell, in the Tut chapel, surrounded by all those other women stinking of body odor and regulation soap. Begging God to let her go home, to let her be a mother again, she clasped her hands and really, really believed.

The car door clicks open, and she eases herself into the passenger side. Inside, it’s clean and smells of pine air freshener; Daniel clearly had an easier time keeping things prim and proper without her around to muss things up. There are no stains on the seat, no coffee cups in the back. The only thing that sticks out among the black leather is a pink flip-flop. Samantha’s shoe. Shannon can stare at it for only so long before she has to avert her eyes.

“Did they give you any trouble?” Daniel says.

She watches him for a breath, her brain fogged out by his voice.

“Getting out? Was everything okay?”

“I think it went like it was supposed to. Smooth enough.” Her cuticles are callused over, but she picks at them anyway, opening the wound until a sharp sting hits her and her thumb weeps a tiny trickle of blood. “Does Samantha know?” she asks. Then she sticks the thumb in her mouth to shut herself up, sucking at the scratch.

To feel so awkward, so separated from Daniel, is a hole in her heart, dripping.

“I haven’t told her,” he says.

Deep in her sternum the words land, pushing tears up into Shannon’s eyes. “Why not?”

“She has an appointment with Taylor next week.” Daniel puts the car into drive, his blue eyes set on the road, away from her. “I figured it would be better to tell her around her therapist than…you know.”

Through the window, Tut’s concrete lines fade to green, the trees bunching together on the road’s shoulder, a hiding spot for the deer that Shannon watched out of her bunkroom window sometimes. When she realized he was driving away from Mountain Brook, the twist of pain came back, right in the middle of her ribcage.

“Don’t you think she should know sooner?” she asks, as Daniel swerves the car up to the interstate, his knuckles white on the wheel. She closes her eyes, waiting for the blow. Her flannel shirt is a wash of heat around her, large and warm—Daniel’s. It’s the same one she wore when they took her in.

“She’s not ready to see you, Shan,” he says.

She imagines Samantha as the girl she is is right now, ruddy-brown hair glowing around her shoulders, looking more like a second-grader than a first-grader. When Shannon was arrested, she hardly had time to say good-bye. Instead, she just watched Samantha outside of the court, clutching onto her father, so small.

“Does she…” Shannon pauses and clears her throat. “Does she still like soccer?”

“She’s on a travel team this year.” Every sculpted muscle in Daniel’s face and neck is tight. They’re crossing now into the more rural area on Birmingham’s outskirts. “It’s good for her to have friends. A support system.”

The only thing that Shannon wants at that moment is to hug Samantha again, to hold her and rock her the way she always wanted to, before Jeremiah, before her jail time, before she started putting herself before her kids. The stark realization hits her: there was never a point when she put them first.

If Daniel is bothering to drive her this far away from Mountain Brook, there’s no point in protesting, no point in anything. For the first time since Jeremiah died, Shannon’s chest aches for a beer, a glass of wine, something to numb herself.

She has to break the silence. “Where are we going?”

Daniel sighs, low and thick. “I got you a room for a couple of weeks. In Verbena. A little place situated close to a couple of stores, landmarks.”

“So you did research. And I’ll be there for how long?”

His hand drifts along the steering wheel, flexing and relaxing. The tan line on his ring finger is gone, as if it never existed, which gives her the answer she’s looking for. Instead of carving away more of the silence, Shannon flicks on the radio. It wavers between an old Tim McGraw song and a gospel program, raspy and unfamiliar. An hour and a half between Tut and Verbena. Shannon can do nothing except sink down and look out the window.

Over the static, Daniel coughs. “We had Jeremiah’s six-month memorial a few weeks back.”

“Six-month memorial?”

“My mom put it together. It was important to her.”

If he expects some sort of response from Shannon, he won’t get it. She sinks lower and blinks back tears, avoiding his pale face, his icy eyes. The sun bursts out from behind a thunderhead, spelling downpours and lightning throughout the afternoon. She picks at the thinning strands of hair on her shoulders, whittling away at the dark split ends. Even though there was an inmate-run salon and she had access to a shiv, she didn’t bother to cut it in prison. Nothing mattered, there or here.

“You should get yourself into some therapy,” Daniel says. “It would do you good.”

A way to defend herself exists in the thick packet of paper in her garbage bag, but her tongue is too numb to move. Getting out of jail comes with homework—a court-appointed social worker and mandated AA meetings. Eventually she’ll have to talk about how this situation started, this cold car-ride with the man she promised to love forever. She’ll tell some stranger about Samantha and Jeremiah and the afternoon when everything went dark.

Trees blur in her peripherals. The preacher on the radio cuts over the static, talking about the Sermon on the Mount. In her mind, images cycle over and over, the same ones she saw every night after lights-out in Tutwiler: a yellowed rolling tray, a technicolor swaddle on top of the car seat.

From the bottom of her belly, a silent scream rises. Shannon bends over her knees, sobbing. What looks like the rest of her life spreads out in front of her.

Daniel doesn’t respond when the tears pour out.

Beneath everything swirling in her gut, beneath the desire for her husband’s warm head in between her collar and her jaw, a persistent ache throbs. It holds a dreamless trance, a boot-scooting boogie, a prayer to God, and a lullaby.

Sweating through her white shirt, Shannon leans against Shop n’ Save’s concrete wall, chest heaving. To hike there, she’s had to cross over three county highways and two bridges. Unfortunately, it’s the only place her mandated social worker could find that was willing to hire her after one phone-call and without a background check.

The balls of her feet are complaining; pain shoots up to her calves. But what she’s doing is for Samantha, not for her. Shannon would walk halfway over the state to see her girl again, to have one more shot at being a mother.

She peeks in the dusty windows. Inside, the store reminds her of a Piggly Wiggly mixed with a Walmart. There’s a large food section next to a mess of a clothing area, and some outdoor supplies take up the back walls. Each aisle boasts only one or two shoppers.

Her face is dribbling with sweat, and she wipes it on the bottom of her shirt, smearing the makeup she bought the night before at CVS. Just what she needs to make a good impression. A car will be a necessity by July if she’s going to avoid a heat stroke. Of all the places to live, for her parents to squat down in Alabama, with its stagnant, humid air and its generous helping of mosquitoes, reads to her like a sick joke. Though she chose to have a kid here too, so there’s no room for her to talk.

Chilled air-conditioning blasts over her shoulders when she steps through the automatic doors, and a pleasant bell dings over her head. The inside is bright, happy, with hand-painted lettering above the dairy fridges that reads, “We are HAPPY to serve you!” The folks ambling around are mostly old people searching for cost-plus deals. Occasional teenagers slouch by, skipping class to pad their pockets with discount candy. An odd sense of home comes over Shannon. This is the kind of place that would fit in well where she grew up, in Columbiana.

“Shannon?”

She whips her head around. A woman with a wide smile and rounded features is coming toward her, long black hair flitting over her red vest. Polished and professional—everything you would expect of a manager.

Shannon folds her hands across the makeup stain along her stomach—the cold light is doing nothing to make it less noticeable—while nervousness crawls up her back. “That’s me.”

“I’m Tiffany, the GM here,” the woman says, beckoning her closer. “I’ll start you off with a tour, and then we’ll get to training.”

Before Shannon can respond, Tiffany takes off, winding between shelves and shoppers.

Their first stop smells ripe, ugly, and awful. “The seafood counter isn’t something you’ll have to deal with,” Tiffany explains. Shannon is half listening to her, half watching the man behind the glass cut a piece of fish in half, then in fourths. “They prefer to do their own stocking.”

“That’s good, I guess,” Shannon says. Her nose wrinkles, and she makes eye contact with one of the lobsters in the live tank.

This is for Samantha. She’s taking what she can get.

As Tiffany walks on ahead of her, Shannon can see just how badly her vest’s logo has worn out, the thick white letters reading “Sho…ve” instead of “Shop n’ Save.” The teenagers in the candy aisle might just take that as an invitation.

They trail through the store, Tiffany explaining the basics of stocking and Shannon nodding when she has to, fighting a childish urge to run her hands along the packages in the makeup section, to feel their cold gleam. Though the outsides are dusty, the insides are perfectly shiny, cans and bottles tilted just so, their pleasing labels facing the world.

It’s a simple enough job, something she can do and zone out, ignoring her thoughts when they try to nudge her toward Jeremiah or Daniel or the cold hard facts that make up her life. The sweat all over her has dried, but her skin is still tacky, distracting Shannon from Tiffany’s instructions.

“Shannon?”

“Yeah? Sorry, got kind of in my head there.”

Tiffany is standing by the checkout counter. “It’s fine,” she says. “I was just saying that we can take five now, and then you can finish your shift out stocking the canned goods.”

“Right.” Shannon’s chest relaxes. “Sounds good to me.”

Tiffany comes a bit closer, smelling like a pleasant mix of sweat and cherry perfume, hushing her voice. “Your social worker says that you’ll need a manager to sign off on some forms every day. I’ve printed them out for you, so don’t forget them before you leave.”

“Forms?”

“You have to get papers signed for your parole, right? So they know you’re working.”

A sandy feeling scrapes over Shannon’s tongue. Stepping back, she schools her facial muscles to neutral. “Parole?” she echoes. Then, in a whisper, “How do you know that?”

“Rebekah helped set up this interview,” Tiffany says. Her face is unreadable. “She’s a nice woman. Not all of the public-service ones are, so count yourself lucky.”

The world is ending around Shannon. She can pick up a dozen different conversations, her ears zeroing in on the smallest detail. There’s nothing for her to focus on, nothing that can drag her thoughts away. A crumpled magazine rests against the checkout counter, its bottom thudding against the still-rotating belt. She attempts to make out the words smattered across the front, but none of the anxiety fades. Her chest is heaving.

“Hey.” Tiffany interrupts the spiral. “It’s not a big deal to me, or to anybody here.” She touches Shannon’s arm, bright and comforting.

Shannon flinches away. Tears prick at the corner of her eyes. “I thought it could be a secret.”

“Oh, honey.” Tiffany brings her in for a hug. “There are a lot of people here on a work program. You’re not going to be judged for that.”

It’s comforting, but it’s not enough. Her manager knows Shannon’s business now, and there’s no telling how much she’s heard. If Tiffany knew exactly what got Shannon into prison, there’s no way she would be as kind as she’s being now.

“Let’s go out the back,” Tiffany says.

She keeps her touch light on Shannon’s shoulder and leads her through the aisles, retracing some of their tour. The empty party-supply section screams at Shannon with colors and pictures. Chest hollow, she counts her breaths, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other until they go through the double doors at the back of the store.

Then full-bodied sobs burst out of her mouth. Tiffany watches. To do this in front of a stranger is like clawing her chest open, made even worse by the fact that this woman has to sign the paychecks Shannon desperately needs.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps. “I didn’t realize it would hit me so hard.”

“No, I’m sorry.” Tiffany says. She sits on a dusty red milk crate, patting the blue one next to her. Sitting, Shannon puts her face in her hands while Tiffany continues, “I should have been way more aware. But folks usually talk about it around here like it’s normal.”

“Do you have a cigarette?”

Tiffany pulls a pack out of her back pocket. They each light up, sharing her lighter. In the heat-lamp sun, the smoke is an old friend. Shannon breathes easier.

“Really, I hate that I sprang that on you.”

“I should have expected it,” Shannon says. “I can’t keep it a secret forever.”

“Like I said, I will never judge you.” Tiffany drags on her cigarette, looking out over the empty back lot. “You picked up the training just fine, and that’s what we care about.”

“You said there are others who have been in?”

“Yeah. I mean, when you don’t require a clean background or a drug test, you get a ton of different types. As long as they function, it doesn’t matter either way.”

“I guess that’s good. I was in a bind trying to find something.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

The question is simple, said without expectation, as if this were a casual, easy conversation. Shannon’s heartbeat picks up; she pictures telling Tiffany about Jeremiah and the car and the part she played in his death.

“Maybe one day. It’s not something I like digging up.”

“I get that.” Tiffany stretches out her short legs in the sun. “Just know that there are people who understand, me included. I’ve seen people go in and out of prison, and I’ve lost people to the system—family members, actually. My brother, for one.”

“I’m sorry,” Shannon whispers. Then she says, “I lost my son. A baby.” The words come out sounding strange, but it lifts her up to be honest. “He died in a hot car.”

She sucks the last of her cigarette and stubs it out on the blacktop, rubbing it with her shoe. There’s no way she can bring herself to look at her manager now. She knows just how people’s faces contort when they hear those words.

When I started GLASS MOTHER, I tried to imagine the worst thing that someone could possibly do, and then came up with a character who, having done this terrible thing, tries to rationalize her actions in order to avoid experiencing the full scope of her guilt. A child’s death is horrific enough, but for the child’s own mother to be the cause of it is a narrative thread that I wanted to pull at, to develop. I wanted to tell the story of an extremely complex and unlikable character, someone who maintains a cognitive dissonance between her abject tragedy and the choices she made to cause it.

Shannon White was born from this idea. As she recovers from imprisonment and the death of her son in a hot car, her mind is caught between two extremes: punishing herself for the role she played in the tragedy and blinding herself to the fact that her actions caused severe harm to her family. She is a recovering alcoholic, the mother of one living daughter, and a woman who has sold herself a fantasy that her habits and choices can always be forgotten, forgiven.

Soon enough, she learns that her family has not interpreted her guilty verdict and the death she caused in the same way. As a result, Shannon is thrust into a new reality in which she must account for her life before prison and, at the same time, craft the shaky start of a new one.

In GLASS MOTHER, I aim to tell an honest story in which redemption is possible, but incomplete: there will always be people who can never forgive Shannon. I also aim to show the realistic consequences of avoidance, addiction, and the negative aspects of personality.