She was keeping the baby. Somewhere along the way, she’d made her decision without even fully registering that she’d done it. By not doing anything about it, she supposed. Having the baby would be a turning point in her life. It would reorient her after all those years of feeling out of whack. It would be, in a word, redemption. She’d guard this redemption fiercely—Bluto would have nothing to do with it.

But she had yet to break the news to Mary-Sue.

After a full week with no word from her mother, Kate felt it was time to take action. She tried to recall the name of Mary-Sue’s Bible-nut neighbor whose backyard was sinking into the Everglades. Larry something. Or was it even Larry? She should have paid closer attention; even a lousy parent would have casually noted the name of her child’s playmate. Now there was absolutely nobody she could call to drive by her mother’s house to see if things were all right. She tried the local sheriff’s department but was put on hold for so long that both times the line went dead.

The next morning, she was on a plane to Miami. In the air, with nothing else she could do, she kicked off her shoes and took a nap against the window—her first unfettered sleep in days. She woke up when the plane touched down at Miami International, a low-key airport that made her think of the shopping malls built in the eighties, when land was infinite. She bought herself a shot of Cuban coffee from a cart strung with plastic bananas, and roused herself. The West Indian coffee lady gave her a genuine smile, full of Caribbean hospitality, a far cry from the resentful scowls of the vendors at LAX who made her feel bad when all she wanted to do was overpay for bottled water.

“Take care, sweetie,” the lady said as Kate tottered away.

The rental car clerk gave her a complimentary upgrade and handed her the keys to a Lincoln Town Car for no apparent reason. It was only when she got out to the car and saw her own reflection in its polished black doors that she realized why everybody had been so nice. It wasn’t that Florida loved its tourists better, it was that she was a woman with a five-month baby bump who was traveling unassisted and looking completely exhausted, overwhelmed, lost. Those fanny packs under her eyes. She was supposed to be radiant.

Within an hour, Kate found herself effortlessly steering through the flat grids of avocado groves in Mary-Sue’s neck of Homestead. The sultry, subtropical air flooded the car’s interior as soon as she rolled down her window, and condensation bloomed on every surface. The steering wheel instantly went damp. This was air so loafy it would prop her up if she fell asleep standing. And she did very much feel like sleeping.