“I am definitely going to tell my mom,” I said. Aside from what I’d done this summer, I was a very good girl. I never wanted my mom to worry about me. She had been screwed over, so why would I make it worse for her?

“Well, I think I won’t tell her, and as long as we don’t die on the drive to Memphis, it should be okay.”

“How many posters should we bring?” I asked.

“Fifty?” he said, but I could tell he was thinking about that Huey Burger or whatever the hell it was called. He wanted to show off how cool Memphis already was, not bring what we’d made in Coalfield to it. But do you think I cared about that?

“Let’s bring a hundred,” I replied. “Just to be safe.”

I ASKED MY MOM THAT EVENING, AFTER THE BOYS HAD GONE out to meet up with friends. I’d made some brownies from a mix, because I knew she liked sweets, and we were watching Jackson Browne on VH1 Storytellers, a singer she loved so much, she had taped it earlier in the summer and would watch it while she drank a beer at the end of the day. Right after “Doctor My Eyes,” her favorite song, I asked her if I could go with Zeke to Memphis.

“What now?” she asked, still humming the last song, but then she snapped to attention. I could tell she was a little irritated that I had messed up her moment of peace after a long day. She put her can of beer down on the coffee table and turned so she was facing me. “Memphis?” she repeated.

“Yeah, it’s not really that far. Zeke wants to show me the city. Like, you know, the zoo? They have a zoo. Or . . . Graceland?”

“You want to drive all day to go see Graceland?” she asked.

“Well, not Graceland exactly. Like, not a specific place. Maybe we’ll see a Memphis Chicks game.”

“None of the things you’ve mentioned are things I’ve ever heard you say you like,” she said. “Honey, I’ve been to Graceland. It’s, you know, smaller than you think. It’s really garish, but it’s not worth driving that far to see it. I mean . . . he’s no Jackson Browne.”

“Okay, Mom, it’s not what we’ll do. It’s just going somewhere. We haven’t done any kind of summer vacation, like no beach or Disney World—”

“Now you want to go to Disney World? Honey, you would hate it, the crowds. You know your dad took me there for our honeymoon? Our honeymoon? The Magic Kingdom? My god, I should have known.”

I realized that maybe the nearly empty beer on the coffee table had not been my mom’s first one. She had mentioned the honeymoon at Disney World a dozen times since my dad had left us.