“That’s up to your mother,” he said. Leaving the decision, the responsibility, to her, the way he left everything else.

“They still should know,” I argued.

“After the surgery,” my mother declared. “You can tell them then. When you can say I’m better.”

Unless she wasn’t. What would I say then?

“Amy put off her trip already,” Momma said. “And Beth . . . This show is her big chance.”

“Dad?”

“You heard your mother,” my father said. “Dealing with all you girls is too much. She needs to concentrate on getting better. Then everything will be fine.”

Was he kidding? But he genuinely believed that, because that’s what our mother had always let him believe. As long as he wasn’t inconvenienced, everything was fine. He saw her inability to take care of him as her weakness, not his.

“It’s in the doctors’ hands now. And the Lord’s. What could your sisters do?”

They could be here, I thought. We could be here for one another.

I swallowed hard and bent to kiss my mother. “Whatever you want, Momma.”

Because what else could I say?

All my life I’d watched her care for my father. Care for us all, providing, managing, keeping everything running smoothly. “The woman makes the marriage,” my mother told me on my wedding day. But she couldn’t do it alone. It was easy to blame my father for not doing more to help.

Maybe she’d never asked.

Well.

I got in my car and closed my eyes for a second. The smells of apple juice, pee, and Things Under Seats wrapped around me. Maybe I’d let John take the car to get cleaned, after all.

John. If I were in the hospital, my husband wouldn’t be patting my hand, telling me how the Lord would provide, that was for sure. He’d get to work, making sure we were taken care of.

Exhaling, I opened my eyes and called Carl Stewart to ask about that job.

CHAPTER 13

Jo

I’m starving,” I declared on Monday morning.

Eric’s eyes crinkled.

“What?” I said. “We must have burned up, like, a million calories.”

His lips curved. “Indeed.”

I punched his arm. “From the run.”

After a warm-up jog along the High Line, we’d descended the stairs at 18th Street. Energized by the cold and the city’s pulse, we ran, past graffiti-decorated Dumpsters and storefronts, through the crowd of office workers and artists bundled in scarves and boots, around parents pushing strollers. Four miles, five, our feet hitting the cobblestones, our breath making puffs of fog in the air. I was glowing inside and out.

In my kitchen, I stretched, trying not to hit Eric with my elbow, sensitive to the twinge of underused muscles. “I’m not used to all this activity.”

Eric lowered his water bottle. “I pushed you too fast.”

Yes. No. I pulled out my hair elastic and put it back in again. Was he talking about the run?

He hadn’t pushed me. I was the one who got physical, right? Determined to move on with my life, confident of my ability to set the pace. Go, me. But now . . .