Ben leaned down and kissed my hair. “We’ll be right outside if you need us.”

“Hopefully making it so I can go home?” I asked.

Luke nodded. “On it.”

They filed out past my mother, and she smiled hesitantly at them. But that’s what it was. Hesitance and not something fake.

She hovered in the door until Eva left too, shooting me an encouraging smile.

Mom shut the door and looked like she was steadying herself. Finally, she turned to me, eyes watery. “I owe you an apology, Esme.”

“Yes, you do.” I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it.

She took a step closer. “I’m sorry. Especially for this morning. I… I honestly don’t even know what I was thinking. It was so clear, and now I can’t find a single reason that makes sense.”

“I just don’t understand why, Mom.”

She smiled briefly. “I won’t make excuses for it, but I was trying to protect you in my own way. Your dad and I—” She broke off and cleared her throat. “We had a plan for how we were going to help you guys find packs. It still involved a matchmaker, but the way we’d talked, it was going to be led by the two of you.”

Slowly, she walked around the bed and sat in the chair Eva had been in. “When he passed, I still wanted to do everything we planned. And then Eva met her pack, and I was running out of time. I thought—I had myself convinced the best way for you to find someone was the way we’d designed. And when you brought them over, it was like…” She shook her head. “It was like I was being replaced? Like everything I’d tried to do wasn’t good enough. Like your father’s spirit was right there telling me I’d failed you by not finding you a pack.”

“Mom, Dad would never say that.”

“I know.” Her eyes were glassy with tears. “I know that.”

We sat in silence for a moment, and she found her voice. “When you left earlier, it was like someone had finally turned a light on in my head. How did I get to a place where both my daughters were disappointed in me? How did I manage to lose the only two people I have left? And I looked at myself. Really looked at myself. I haven’t been a very good mother to you, Esme.”

I blinked back my own tears. “I miss him too, you know. It hasn’t been easy doing it without him. The stuff about people wanting Eva had started before he died, and the stuff with Aaron, but it got so much worse. And it was like I was disappearing.

“I don’t hate you, Mom. I just want you to see me.”