“Very funny.” Molly’s face flashes panic—no doubt she senses I’m only half joking. “Anyway, what’s stopping you now?”

“I’m not sure. Lack of ambition, maybe.” But there is something I do want, something I have only begun to believe in. “Your dad liked the idea of me taking over Pins & Needles.”

“Of course he liked it. It’s a perfect idea, are you kidding? You can do anything, Mom. I love the thought of you running the fabric store. I totally love it. I hope you go for it.”

Fear and uncertainty turn to something else—Hope. Excitement.

She takes out a small stack of framed pictures, gazes at a shot of her dad with Hoover.

“I know he wishes he could be here,” I tell her.

“No, he doesn’t. You think I don’t know why Dad didn’t come?” Molly is incredulous. “You think he stayed home because he doesn’t care? He’s my father. He didn’t come for the same reason he didn’t go to the vet with you last spring when Hoover was so sick. It’s not weakness or that he doesn’t care. It’s that he cares too much.”

“You know your father well.”

“You don’t need a college degree to figure Dad out.” She sets the photograph on a shelf in her dorm room and her gaze lingers on it. “Look what you’re going back to, Mom. How can you not be happy?”

The tension in my chest unfurls on a wave of lightness. I am married to a man with a great heart. My daughter and I both know it.

* * *

“Where are you going to eat tonight?” I page through the orientation booklet. “The freshman dining room’s in Memorial Hall—”

“Don’t worry, Mom. I won’t starve. I’m still full from lunch. I might just settle for granola bars and juice.”

“You should go to the dining hall, even if you’re not hungry.” I bite my tongue. I have to stop with the you-shoulds.

I take out the quilt, which I’ve carefully folded and tied with a ribbon in her high school’s colors. “I want you to have this, a reminder of home. It’s not really finished, though,” I point out. “There’s a lot more I wanted to do to it.”

“It’s great.” She unties the ribbon and wafts the quilt over the bed. Sunlight falls across the crazy patchwork, the loopy quilting with its hidden messages.

“It’s not finished,” I say again, feeling a thrum of panic all out of proportion with the situation. “I thought I would finish it during the trip, and we’re here and it’s still not done.”

“It’s beautiful, Mom. I love it.”

“I still have to—”

“No, you don’t.”

“Maybe you could bring it home at Christmas break and I’ll work on it some more then.”