Maybe not even a lifetime.

I pull her damp clothes out of the washing machine and throw them into the dryer, and then I join her out on the deck. Alone. I don’t know where my brothers are, but I’m thankful they’ve made themselves scarce.

She’s sitting in an Adirondack chair wearing only one of my large T-shirts. Her hair hangs in wet waves around her shoulders, and her skin is scrubbed clean.

I’ve been thinking while she showered—thinking about something I’d rather forget.

But I can’t.

I called my mom and she’s doing fine. In fact, she begged me not to return to Seattle, not to give up my inheritance, for her. She has friends who are checking in, and she’ll be in rehab soon with all her needs met.

But God, the guilt…

My mom was always the one constant in my life, and now I can’t be the constant in hers.

“Don’t you dare feel guilty,” she said to me on the phone. “This is your time to shine, Austin. I’ll be okay. The business will be okay because I have a shortlist of pilots I can call who wanted the job. I’m sure one of them will take it. So don’t even think about giving up on your inheritance or more importantly, your chance to fall in love. I want grandkids.”

Her words still hang in my mind.

My mom means so much to me, and I’d feel awful if we were at odds.

So I have to have a tough conversation with Carly.

As much as I loved that she came to me at the station, that she left with me instead of her family, she’s in the middle. Pulled in two directions. Her family is important to her as much as my mom is to me. I can’t have them be at odds. I won’t.

I’d love to have her here with me—as much as I yearn for her constantly—but she needs to go home. She needs to make things right with her father. I won’t be able to have her completely happy if she has to choose. I don’t want her to do so.

With my mom in the hospital, I recognize the feeling of having to choose between who you love and who to be with. But Mom and I aren’t fighting.

Carly smiles and looks up when I settle in the chair beside her. It’s dark out, but soft lights are built into the underside of the deck’s railing. I can see her clearly, but nothing beyond the golden glow.

“Hey, baby.” I take her hand. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay.” She sighs, playing with the bottom of my t-shirt that rests mid-thigh. I feel like a caveman seeing her wearing it and I wonder what she has on beneath. If anything. “Really. I’ve been through much worse.”

I tense, as I do whenever I think about what she experienced. But I, like she, must come to terms with it and move forward. As much as it pains me to know what she’s been through, if she can move on, I must as well.