“Actually, we’re having a pretty hot, dry summer. Climate change, I guess.” She shot me a semi-amused look. “Are we really going to talk about the weather? Am I allowed to broach the subject of your engagement? Is it my place?”

“Honestly, I’m all talked out. I could sleep for days. But you’re my mom. It’s always your place,” I assured her.

She smiled gratefully and I noticed how well she really did look. Alcoholism had taken a toll on Mom’s skin. She had more wrinkles than some women her age, but the yellow tinge to her skin tone was gone. She looked healthy and glowing. My pretty, shiny-eyed mom from when she first met Phil was back. Hope, despite all my best attempts to stifle it, flickered to life inside me.

I guess I always would hope for the best when it came to the people I loved.

Roane’s face flashed before my eyes, and those doubts Greer had breathed life into caused a stomach cramp.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I read all the emails you sent Phil, and he’d tell me about your phone conversations too when you were over there.”

“I don’t mind.” I’d assumed as much.

“Your young man . . . Roane . . . he sounds like a good man.”

“He lied to me,” I replied automatically. “And anyway, I didn’t go there to fall in love with some guy.” God, did I sound bitter. “I went over there, telling myself from the start not to get involved with him, because I was there to find myself, to find out what I wanted from life. Not to find a man. I didn’t listen! I didn’t listen to myself and look where it got me. I lost the bookstore and a life that should have been my home. Because of him. Because I gave up my independence for him.”

“Oh, sweetheart, you’ve got it all wrong.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Excuse me?”

“Love isn’t about giving up your independence, and I doubt very much that you of all people gave it up for a man.”

I made a face but she was right. With the exception of not learning to drive there, I’d refused Roane’s help buying the store, wanting to do that for myself. I ran the store by myself with no help from anyone else. “Okay, maybe I didn’t. Entirely. But I still didn’t listen to my good sense.”

Mom studied me thoughtfully. “Do you think that it’s somehow weak to think of a person as ‘home’?”

“No one should rely on someone for that. A home should be something outside of a person. They’re too unreliable. You lose them, you lose your home.”

“Well, I hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but that’s life.”

“Mom—”