The Unexpected Harte

The gentle whoosh of the windshield wipers was her only accompaniment. She thought briefly of putting the radio on, to listen to the drive-time news. She thought of asking Siri to play her favorite podcast. Then she thought better of it. What she needed now was the one gift a person might truly give themselves: the gift of peace and calming solitude. She needed a clear mind, to empty it of all else, even if only for a short drive to the prison.

The thrum of the rain on the car was helpful. It reminded her of holidays in her parents’ caravan. That took her mind away from the car crash her life had become. An unfortunate idiom, she thought, switching lanes. Oh, she could have sent a junior lawyer to get the consent signed, but if she didn’t get away from the office she might have screamed. Her destination on this short drive out of the city was HMP Barlinnie; her reason was to see the firm’s client Pat Wallace, the infamous Glasgow hardman whose decades of criminal rule had finally caught up with him. She would meet him in the interview rooms, convince him to sign the consent for the pub’s license, and be on her way.

She was now on the M8, the motorway that scythed its way through Glasgow city center like a killing blow. She looked up to Minerva, standing atop the Mitchell Library, peering across the city in her constant search for wisdom. She thought of her mother then, and her constantly kind overtures to have her daughter seek out knowledge from an early age. The Mitchell had been a special place for them. Then the hate rose. She tried to force the thought of her mother out of the car as if casting it from the window to tumble and toss around those others making their own drives to here and there. She realized, with such hurt that her chest physically shook, that she would much rather confront the gangster than her own mum.