“You fucker!” Arthur cried. “You goddamn pervert!” But they were both laughing, and I had the feeling that something had been arranged: You wanna see how she likes it? You wanna see for yourself?

I took a deep breath and told Arthur I wasn’t just somebody to fuck. “What did you think we were?” he said. “A little family?” He was getting into a lot of harder drugs—they made him say things he didn’t agree with a few minutes later. But they were still the things he said. That was the last time I felt betrayed by a man, I think. Afterward I expected it.

I left in the early morning, hitched a ride with an older couple down the coast. They drove a green van and bought me pancakes from a diner off the highway. The whole drive I practiced what I would say to my mom. I wanted to tell her what I’d learned. I wasn’t looking for love all over the goddamn state anymore. I knew a thing or two about family.

Lucy came to the door in her blue silk nightgown, the one with orange juice stains across the lap. She looked older. She was older. She had her hand over her heart. “It beats all funny now,” she said. “I think you did that.”

It was one of the moments I loved her most, I think. Seeing her tired eyes and how they weren’t looking at anything but me. Knowing I’d hurt her body by going away. This amazed me. It made me feel ashamed of myself.

“Oh, Tilly,” she said, and started crying, and I wasn’t sure why—because I was safe, because I was home, because I looked like I was doing alright even though I’d been away, or because I didn’t look alright, I looked wrong. I didn’t know what I looked like, honestly.

I took her hand. Her skin felt soft, like well-worn paper.

“I feel beat up, Momma. I’m not doing so great.”

“You’re back,” she said. “That’s what matters.”

In all the days that followed, she never asked me why I’d gone, only why I’d come back. I think it made her glad to hear how lonely I’d been.

“Dora says I should have let you figure things out for yourself,” she said. By then Dora had moved to Boston, where she was going to law school. I wondered about that boy. Was he still in the picture? Sometimes she called the house, and we kept a certain silence balanced between us on the phone. One time I asked if she was happy. She said she was exactly where she wanted to be.