Sara Parker was a frugal woman, splurging on only what she deemed necessities—like a margarita blender. She lived below her means in a two-bedroom brick ranch that she had taken a decade to DIY into her own personal paradise. The living room was a shocking turquoise with comfortable white couches and walls cluttered with family photos. The only bathroom was a cheery canary with a frilly lace shower curtain and teal-framed mirrors. Sara’s bedroom was a moody dark purple.

“It went…well,” Gloria decided, remembering Aldo’s quick grin and how it worked its way through her ribs to glow away in her chest.

“You like this Harper?” Sara asked, juicing half of a grapefruit with vigor.

Of course her mother had known where she’d gone. Sara claimed to have mystical powers of sight passed down through her great-great-grandmother, a desert canyon shawoman. Growing up, Gloria had preferred to believe her mother had hidden video surveillance equipment around the house.

“I like her very much. She’s happy, friendly.”

“Good,” Sara nodded briskly. The blender whirred to life.

Gloria made herself useful and pulled two margarita glasses from the shelf next to the sink. Candytuft and begonias bloomed in a riot of color on the other side of the window. Her mother had scrimped and saved for this house for two years after her husband, Gloria’s father, had walked out on them. Sara had filled her life with work and pretty things. But without the man she’d called Daddy, Gloria had been hungry to fill the void of male attention. When Glenn Diller had taken her hand at a summer bonfire and kissed her in the shadows, tasting of beer and tobacco…, well, she’d thought that void would finally be filled.

Her mother, on the other hand, had used the abandonment to build a life exactly the way she wanted it. She was a hair stylist, and had they lived in a more metropolitan area, Gloria knew her mother would have been a wealthy business owner. But Sara was content in Benevolence, running her own shop, giving Manhattan-worthy cuts at rural Maryland prices. She worked six days a week and had two part-time employees. She dated when she found a man worthy and otherwise filled her time with books and friends and wine.

Sara plopped a frothy pink margarita in front of Gloria. “Take your medicine, Gloria.”

The Gloria Who Left Glenn After the First Time would have treated her mother to a spa day and lunch at a restaurant where waiters pulled out the chairs for you. They would have giggled through facials and shopped and enjoyed a whole day of pampering.

This Gloria, the broken one, reached for her mother’s hand and squeezed it. “I want to be you when I grow up, Mama.”

The iron-spined Sara bit her lip, her brown eyes welling with tears.

“Mija,” she whispered. “Don’t be me. Be you. And be happy.”