The Good Girl

Gabe finds Colin’s next of kin: Kathryn Thatcher in Gary, Indiana. He also discovers that Colin was working for someone else. He visits the house in Gary to question Kathryn. No one answers the door, and he enters, following sounds into a living room where an elderly woman is struggling to open a TV dinner. Gabe helps her open the dinner and eat while asking her questions, but she can only answer with her son’s name, pleading with the detective. Gabe is sympathetic: “I think of my own mother” (216). He realizes that Colin came each week to care for his mom but hadn’t been home in months. He looks around the apartment and finds gas receipts that indicate Colin had no intention of fleeing. Before returning to Chicago, Gabe realizes he must take care of Kathryn before she starves or falls and breaks a bone. He loads up clothes and medication and takes her to a nearby nursing home.

Colin is shocked that the police haven’t arrested him after years of robbery and dealing drugs. Mia tells him the names of trees and birds—“She teaches without meaning to” (220). She tells him about volunteering at a homeless shelter to see what it was like for a student of hers, who lived in a shelter on the North Side.