After breakfast, she pulls a stool into the middle of my living room floor, places a towel around me, and gently pushes on my shoulders to make sure I’m sitting up straight and even. The familiar routine, her touch and the comfortable quiet between us, is an unexpected balm. I close my eyes, listen to the snip, her even breathing. But the moment lulls me away and before everything fades, I pull a note card from my pocket. Dad died of a heart attack. My chin trembles and I drop my head and slide the card back into my pocket. When I do, Mom pauses, hands on my shoulders, but doesn’t say anything.

“How long have you lived here?” I ask.

The snipping stops. “Not long. Just a few weeks before he died.”

“Were you back together?”

“In a way we’ve never been apart, because that man refused to give up on me.” Her voice is hoarse.

My shoulders jerk away from her touch. “You hurt him. I think he was lonely.”

She doesn’t say anything, but the snip continues, and I think I hear her crying, but I don’t turn around to look. I don’t think I can share in her pain.

Her phone rings. “Hello? Okay, stay there, I’m coming. Yes, I’m glad you called.” She finishes with my hair, brushes it out, then quickly packs up her things. “I have to go.” She touches my face. “I love you.” I don’t say anything back.

She leaves behind a lingering aroma of bread and powdered sugar, the tang of orange juice. My fingers run through my hair; it feels fresh and new. I sit on the stool, look out the window. The morning-blue sky is threatened by a distant storm brewing in a roiling mix of gray clouds that skirt the mountaintops. Despite the change outside, an unexpected calm washes over me, and I sit back, buoyed by an irrational surge of hope, and write, She’s different. I think it’s real. Then I shut my notebook and bite my lip. Could she really have changed? I read the note card; my eyes burn when I count how many times I’ve seen the words before me. Hash marks fill the paper. I stand, ready to crawl back under the covers, to sleep, to be anywhere but here in my living room, alone.

Instead, I force myself to sit down at my desk and make a plan for the day.