It’s not like I haven’t dragged the internet enough to know that I’m one of the lucky ones. My morning sickness is mostly confined to the morning, and once I choke down a cracker or slice of dry toast, my stomach typically settles. Mama used to brag about how she puked for nine months straight when she was pregnant with me, so sick she begged the doctors to induce her at six months—though that was also around the time people started giving her dirty looks in the bar, so her motivation wasn’t entirely pure. Still, as much as she hated being pregnant, I’m pretty sure she hated being a mother even more.

I sit on my heels and flush with a shaky hand, my throat burning. If only I could flush my thoughts of my mother, too, watch them swirl like last night’s steak dinner down the drain. I hate the way this pregnancy has cleared new space for her in my brain, allowed thoughts of her to bubble up more and more often.

Sunning in a banged-up folding chair in the yard, her skin slick with baby oil. Smoking cigarette after cigarette while Chet and I run wild, pelting us with the butts she’d fling into the yard. Every time I spot a cigarette stub smeared with lipstick on the ground, I think of her.

But also, memories of her French-braiding my hair, her fingernails tickling my scalp. Of clomping around the trailer in her favorite boots, the hot thrill when she’d gloss my lips or spritz me with her perfume. There, she’d say when she was done. Now you’re prettier than me. In the space between her words, I understood: pretty can get you a man. Pretty can snag you a better provider than your father.

Stop.

Maybe it’s the hormones, but the memories suddenly sting more than they used to, a hot poker pang that throbs for hours. I banish the woman from my thoughts and step into the shower.

Paul’s return last night conjured up more questions, especially after my middle-of-the-night peek into the safe. More than once, I considered marching into the bedroom, shaking him awake and demanding some answers. Why Pitts Cove? What happened with Jax, really? I try to think about it logically, to shove aside my feelings for Paul and examine everything with clinical detachment, but I can’t. I’m too emotionally entangled.

In the kitchen, I stand for a moment at the window, looking out at the lake. In the few months I’ve lived here, it’s become a morning ritual, watching the sun climb up the trees, golden flashes that light up like a sea of stars. Most of the snow is gone now, only an occasional white patch in the shaded spots—down by the dock, under the trees, a big smudge on the opposite shore.

No, not snow. A boat.