Holy shit. I’m in love with Nick.

I bark out a short laugh and Dad laughs back, neither of us in on the other’s joke, but it doesn’t matter.

“Thanks, Dad,” I say, wrapping his body in a hug.

He hugs me back. And while I know that we’ve been having two different conversations, and he doesn’t even know what he’s helped me realize, it doesn’t matter. Because we had our father-daughter heart-to-heart. He helped me, like a dad does, even if he’ll never know it.

“Thanks for coming over, sweetheart,” he says, shuffling back toward his chair.

“No, Dad, we’re going to the doctor, remember? Come on.”

“I spend my entire life at the doctor,” he grumbles, but he follows me out the door.

* * *

After his uneventful appointment, I drop him off at Brookwood and walk back out to my car. As I dig in my purse for my keys, my hand comes across a piece of paper I somehow missed before.

It’s a phone number, followed by a few words in Milo’s handwriting, which I recognize because it looks the same as it did when we were writing and illustrating largely plagiarized versions of Disney stories in first grade and passing them off as original works of fiction by The Talented Sanderson Twins (we thought being a twin-author team would add a certain cachet).

Mom’s number. She’d love to hear from you.

I groan. I know what Annie would say about this, if I told her. She’d say my romantic comedy arc has led me toward personal growth; I’m accepting help from her and Milo, owning up to the fact that I can’t do everything myself, receiving the love that was around me all along. Now, I just need to forgive my mom.

One catch, Annie, I say in my internal monologue. I don’t want to forgive her. She sucks.

I know, I know, I know. I’m an adult now. I’m almost thirty. I should be over this, all easy-breezy like, “Her? You mean the woman who abandoned us and left me alone to care for our family when I was a child myself? Oh, honey, I barely remember!”

Well, that’s not real. The truth is that I remember everything, and it majorly screwed me up. A kind of screwed-up-ness that has stayed with me my whole life, the kind that has sabotaged relationships and led me to push people away. The kind of screwed up that made me think it was normal to avoid Nick, a person who has only ever been good to me and who I’m definitely falling in love with.

Mom walked away from us. And now, apparently, she’s older and wiser and wishes she hadn’t scooted out of our lives without so much as a goodbye.

My mom may have made a mistake that she’s going to spend the rest of her life regretting, but I don’t want regrets, and I can avoid her mistakes. I want to stay close to the people who love me, instead of abandoning them when it gets uncomfortable.