“Can I ask you something about her? If you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to. Don’t get mad.”

“Kinda have me in a precarious position here,” I tell him.

He laughs, holding on to the boat deck beside me, and then goes serious. “Does your mom really date … a lot of people?”

“Is my mom the giant slut that everyone says she is?”

“Whoa. I didn’t say that. I’m not the morality police. No judgment.”

“It’s fine,” I say, a little weary in both my arms and my mind. “Honestly? I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not. She says she’s not interested in relationships, and she just likes men. But I don’t even know if that’s true, because she’s never happy about it.”

Last year, when Mom was managing a bookstore up the coast, one of her assistant managers, a woman in her late twenties, had a similar dating philosophy: new guys every weekend. Marianne was loud and proud about it, and all her online dates met her for the first time at the store, were introduced to all the booksellers on shift, and they gave the thumbs up or down—it was all boisterous and funny, and even though I felt sorry for the men she dumped, at least Marianne was honest about it. At least I believed her when she said that’s what she wanted.

But, see, I don’t think it’s what Mom wants. She’s not happy. Sometimes I think there are other reasons why she’s only interested in random encounters—she’s escaping something, hiding something. I tell Lucky, “It almost feels like … I don’t know. An addiction? A gambling problem? Something she does to stop feeling depressed? I don’t even know.”

“Is she depressed?”

“I don’t think so? She doesn’t act like it. She’s just a very private person, weirdly enough. I think everyone in my family is. Like, that’s just the Saint-Martin way. We all keep a part of ourselves locked up. She’s kind of hinted that my grandma was the same way, and I guess I do the same thing to her, because I haven’t told her about my plans to go to Los Angeles.”

“Yeah,” he says, sounding a little forlorn.

“Anyway, it’s none of my business, I guess. I just want her to be okay, you know?”

And that’s true, I realize. Even if I don’t want to keep moving around the country with her, being dragged from town to town, it doesn’t mean I don’t love her. I want her to be okay. I want her to be happy. It makes me feel bad that I can’t help her.

That I’m not enough for her.