The words collect in my throat, a logjam of biting and perfectly timed responses expressing the years of sadness and disappointment that are a callus around my heart. That can describe this everlasting feeling of not being good enough for her, for Tate, for anyone. And now . . . my thoughts trail away because now, I knit my eyebrows together, turn to my notebook. Now it is ten years later, and she is back in Whittier. I picture the look of horror on Dad’s face when he saw Mom at graduation, lurching toward me. Saw him lift his bulk from the seat, stretch his arms out even though he was too far away, the lines of sadness that had carved a path in his face. He’s never said it, but I know he’s never given up hope that she’d come home. Never stopped believing she’d get better. And hurting him, even more than the pain of leaving me, is what I can’t forgive her for.

I swallow and all the words disappear. “I don’t want to see you.” I am thirteen and she is the mother who left me. My fingernails bite into my palms, and I use that little bit of pain to keep from crying.

Mom gives Ruth a sideways glance. “I understand, Claire. But I’ve been sober for nearly ten years now, sweetheart, and I know it doesn’t seem that way to you, but I am stronger now, and the things that made me drink don’t hurt me in the same way. I want to be here for you now.” She chews on her bottom lip. “Vance thought it was time for us to be together.”

Anger rocks me, starts in my fingers, moves up my arms, and I’m speaking through my teeth. “Dad doesn’t want you here, Mom. I just talked to him—” I stop because I’m not sure that’s true, yet just because I can’t remember doesn’t make it untrue either. I start to flip through my notebook, looking for an interaction with Dad that might indicate he knew she was back, because he would have told me.

“It’s true, Claire.”

Ruth’s voice shocks me, brings me out of my notebook that is full of teaching aspirations, bears, but nothing about Mom, not a mention that she’s living back in Whittier. I look up. “True?”

“Alice has moved home. She and Vance want to help you—”

I hold up my notebook as if it’s a shield that can deflect her words. A part of me understands that my reaction is juvenile, but I can’t help feeling as though everyone I thought I could trust is keeping me in the dark. It’s a terrible feeling, but that’s why I have my notebook; that’s why I write everything down.

So I don’t forget.