Nicole was just coming in from one of her nights. I don’t know where she slept. Her skin has gone pale, her hair long and unruly. She’s become lean from running. She runs for miles and miles. She runs until she is numb, head to toe. Inside and out. Then she sleeps all day. Stays out all night. She is a lean, fierce, unruly warrior. And yet the pain still gets inside her.

Where have you been all night? I asked. The usual exchange followed, about how this was none of my business . . . but it was my business because she’s living in my house and what about her GED class and trying to dig herself out of this hole . . . but it’s my fault she’s in the hole; she’s in the hole because of Annie and her grief and because not everyone can just get over it . . . but when is she going to stop using her sister’s death as an excuse for getting expelled from her private school senior year, never going back?

She shrugged, looked me straight in the eye. When did she become like this? This soldier, ready to fight off anyone who comes too close?

What about you? When are you going back to work? she asked.

She likes to remind me that I, too, stopped living—breathing, yes, but not really living.

I had no response to my daughter this morning. I had no response to my son this afternoon.

I didn’t even see Evan after the game. I waited by the door but he must have gone out a different way. I almost marched straight to his dorm to tell him what I thought of his behavior. To do what a mother does when she knows she’s right and when her child needs to learn a lesson.

The sign for the Gas n’ Go grows closer, the clouds darker as these thoughts come. I didn’t find him. I didn’t do what I now think a mother should have done. A good mother.

Suddenly, I know why.

The car slows. I step on the gas, but it doesn’t respond.

I am not a good mother.

I can’t hold them back now, the thoughts of my dead child. Annie. Not that they ever really leave me. They are always lurking, hiding, wearing disguises so I don’t see them as they sneak up.

I steer to the shoulder. The wheel is stiff. The car is dead. When it stops, I try the ignition, but it won’t turn over.

I see the message on the dashboard. I have run out of gas.

How long has the light been on? I have been preoccupied by this day. By these thoughts. John was right. I should not have made this trip. Not today.