Reading his sentence seven times

The gully is quiet in a way the city never is. I keep checking the dial on the cab because I don't trust the wind. If it swings too far south tonight I'll have to move the bag closer to the overhang and I don't want to move the bag. The neonates have been through enough.

My left hand looks worse in torchlight than it does in daylight. I keep flexing the fingers under the tape to prove to myself I still can. The tape is Pieter's fault and I want to write that down so I don't let myself rewrite it by morning as something I brought on myself. He closed the gap. He clipped me. I corrected. Those are the facts and I am tired of giving him more space in my head than he deserves.

The second text came while I was still holding the wheel with the good hand. Father and a woman in a doorway I don't recognise. He wrote that he promises the same for the neonates. I have read that sentence seven times. I don't know what he means by the same. I don't know which part is worse — that he's promising something, or that I think he might mean it.

Elise opened the gate without a word. I am not good at receiving help from people I am not paying. I said thank you twice, which is once too many, and she looked at me like I was a stray she had already decided to let in.

The phone is dead. Good. Tomorrow I will film, drive, deliver. Tonight the Stormers are losing on the radio and the red bag is breathing and I am, against my better judgement, still here.