Upstairs I wait with the light on while Mom brushes her teeth, then pulls back the thin quilt and gets into bed. She’s barely said a word since we came upstairs.

“I was trying to do it right,” she says. “I was trying to be a good mother. I was trying to teach her.” She looks at me. “But I don’t think she wants to hear that.”

“Not yet,” I say.

Mom moves a hand across her eyes. “No,” she says. “And I never was able to make her listen.” She lets out a breath. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, Gillian—to this family.”

I think of Dennis, perhaps in the air by now. Of Lorna, probably asleep in her bed only a mile away. Of Oliver, back in Birch Bend in an empty house, the spare room dark and vacant once again. Of how we’re all just wind-tossed little specks, the future a dark universe swirling all around us.

One way or another, I guess we’ll find out, I think, and turn off the light.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

I wake in the morning to a polite knocking on the door.

“Just a minute,” I say, blinking back to reality. I roll over to see that the other bed is neatly made, and as I get up I see the note left on top of the quilt: Gone for a walk.

I know that’s how Mom relieves stress, but the streets of Miami are not quite the same as the small neighborhood roads of Birch Bend.

“Mom, is that you?” I pad towards the door, figuring she likely left her key behind.

“It’s Sam,” my nephew’s voice says. I swing open the door.

“Sam! Everything okay?”

He nods.

“Do you want to come for breakfast with me? Mom’s still sleeping.” He glances cautiously into the room behind me. “Is Grandma gone?”

“She’s out for a walk. Give me a minute to get changed, okay? And leave your mom a note.”

I upgrade my pajamas to some jeans and a T-shirt and unplug my phone from the nightstand so Mom can text me when she gets back. It lights up and I see three message alerts stacked on my home screen. Oliver.

I thumb open the last one.

Tell me if you don’t want me to come, it says.

I do a double take and go to the first message, wondering if this means what I think it means. It does. He says it felt wrong driving away from the airport yesterday; that he knows what an intense time this must be for me and my family, and he should be here to support me, if that’s something I want.

I call him.

“Oliver?”