Arch went on, but I wasn’t listening. Instead, I was thinking of my mother—young and carefree in jeans and a T-shirt with cutoff sleeves, laughing with the women of Montague Village; in that blue dress she wore on the day she took me to see Yeatman for the first time; the two of us on the couch at the carriage house, eating popcorn and watching Gone with the Wind.

“I don’t know how quickly I can get a flight,” I said.

“I came on Uncle Jim’s plane. We can leave as soon as noon tomorrow. I assume you have a valid passport.”

I nodded.

All at once, a little childish bitterness, nursed into a ten-year grudge held firm by mutual stubbornness, was obliterated. In a matter of seconds, I’d gone from hating Jim Haltom to accepting a ride on his private jet.

“We should probably call Jim, though,” Arch said. “So your mom will know to expect you.”

We went back inside. I pointed to the phone on the desk at the far end of the room and explained the procedure for placing international calls. Arch picked up the handset, dialed, and waited. A muffled voice came through the receiver.

“Hi, this is Arch Creigh,” he said. “Is Jim there?”

He nodded at me.

“I have Bonnie’s son with me,” he said. “Can you put me through to him, please?”

For years, I’d played out the moment I spoke to Jim again for the first time. In those rehearsals, I always had the upper hand. Fate had flipped the tables.

“Uncle Jim?” Arch said. “Yes. He’s right here . . . All right . . . Yes, sir, tomorrow afternoon. Probably between six and seven . . . All right. Here he is.”

He handed me the receiver and gave my shoulder a squeeze.

“Jim?” I said.

“Hello, son.”

I tried to keep my voice steady.

“Can I talk to my mom?”

“She’s sleeping. I can try to wake her.”

“No, don’t do that. Just tell her I’m on the way. Would you like to speak to Arch again?”

“If he’s available.”

I handed Arch the receiver. He turned toward the desk. I walked back out onto the stairs. Beyond the parking lot, the land opened up to raw desert. In the foreground below the purple shadows of the mountains, the landscape was dotted with scattered cacti and flowering Judas trees. I closed my eyes and remembered the farm in April and the endless green meadow in the cool, misty damp of early morning. I thought of my mother there, the way she had looked to me, in love, but also afraid. And I wondered, as she must have then, and perhaps for many years after, why I had found it so hard just to be happy for her.

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