I’ve returned home from seeing Kate, and instead of pushing fourteen on the elevator, I push twelve. I know he’s gone. I’ve written it on a note card I carry with me, plus it’s a line of text that I made as the background on my screen. But I’m standing in front of Dad’s door anyway, hoping for what? That it was all a nightmare?

The door is open a crack, and inside it’s dark, and cool air slips through the opening, touches the tip of my nose. I push against the door and freeze. A woman stands by Dad’s small dining table, one hand stretching out like she means to stop me from entering, a cardboard box lying open on the floor at her feet.

“Mom?” I can’t breathe.

I cross my arms against the heavy beating of my heart. She looks the same and also different. Worn, older, but clear-eyed, not the same woman who left when I was thirteen, nothing like the drunken woman who tackled me at my graduation when I was twenty-five. Images and thoughts tangle into ideas that make no sense except that I don’t feel heated pricks across my scalp, just a deep sadness, like I’ve lost something. I touch my pocket.

“You live here now?”

She nods and I stand there, not surprised but unable to find context. Boxes are strewn about Dad’s floor, but Dad died, so—my mouth goes dry. “Are you packing up his things?”

“I’ve tried.” Her arm gestures to the mostly empty boxes. “I just can’t seem to do it.” She wipes her eyes. “Would you like to help?”

I step inside, a heaviness pulling at my legs. “Sure.”

She hands me a box and directs me to his bookshelf. I notice that other things dot the apartment, feminine touches that don’t belong to my father. The dots connect easily. “Are you living here?”

“I was, we were—” She wets her lips. “He always believed in me, Claire; told me he’d wait his entire life for me if that’s what it took for me to get sober.”

“It did,” I say, but I wince at the harshness in those two little words.

She takes a step back, like I’ve punched her.

My hands tremble from a mixture of emotions. “Do you know how hard it was for him after you left?”

“Claire,” she says and the voice is hers, but it’s smoother than I remember, unhindered by the slur of alcohol. “I know, honey.”