“All joking aside, honey—”

“Mom. We went through this a long time ago, the stuff about respecting myself and using my head. That women’s self-defense class went on for twelve weeks and yes, I read The Gift of Fear. I’m as safe as it’s possible to be.”

“You have all the answers, don’t you, Missy?”

“I’ll have even more once I’m in college.”

We stop for lunch and a fill-up in Futch’s Corner, a town with four stoplights, a defunct train depot and a bus station. A row of storage silos covered in graffiti lines the main road. The lone café has a pictorial menu, which makes it easy to avoid the chopped salad, which in these parts appears to be coleslaw.

In the booth next to us, an elderly couple sits across from each other, slowly and methodically eating their cups of beef barley soup with soda crackers on the side. They manage to get through the entire meal without uttering a single word. The wife puts cream in both cups of coffee. When they get up after finishing their meal, the husband keeps one hand on the small of the wife’s back.

“Old people are so cute, aren’t they?” Molly remarks.

Old people are a nightmare. It’s too easy for me to see myself and Dan in a couple like that, silent and companionable, with nothing to say to each other. I want so much more for us, laughter and interesting conversation, the richness of shared moments. I used to think I knew what my life would look like after Molly, but now I’m not so sure.

Once she’s away at school, Dan and I are going to have to face each other once again with nothing between us, no sports matches to attend, no car pools to drive, no curfews to enforce, no school calendar to dictate our lives. To me, it looks like a void, a yawning breach. Empty space. It’s supposed to be a good thing, but I’ve never been the sort to tolerate empty space. Maybe that’s why I like quilting. Each piece fits perfectly against the others to fill the grid completely.

* * *

On the highway heading east again, we come upon a breakdown pulled off to the side of the road. I slow down but don’t stop. The hood of the car is raised and there’s a woman standing beside it. She has a baby on her hip and there’s no one else in sight. I go even slower, checking the rearview mirror, hoping to see that she’s on a cell phone, getting help.

She isn’t. She’s jiggling the baby and taking a diaper bag out of the car.

Someone else will come along and help her, I figure. But this is a lonely stretch of highway and there’s no one in sight in either direction.

“What are you doing?” Molly asks when I stop and make a U-turn.

“Making sure that woman back there is okay. Maybe she needs my cell phone.”