“You don’t have a job,” he said. “You don’t have any money. You’ve got funny stories about how you live, but that’s pretty much it.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I want something else.”

“So play it out for me, Stella: You guys move into some rich apartment with her banker Wunderkind and you play twelve-steps nursemaid, is that it? You lash her to the bed while she cries out for hooch and tells terrible tales about our terrible mother? While you listen carefully? You keep your crucifix in the pantry?”

“Well,” I said. “Somebody’s been reading his Al-Anon Bible.”

“I don’t know a thing about Al-Anon,” he said. “I’m just afraid of what you want. You want to see her whole life change in an instant? You want to hear her say thank you?”

I was quiet.

“Well?”

“When did you get so bitter, Tom?”

He sighed. “This is for real?”

“I hope so.”

“You’ve always wanted to turn yourself into a story,” he said. “I knew it would get you in trouble someday.”

When a young woman leaves New York, a woman of a certain age and promise, it feels like a verdict delivered at the end of a trial. How long did you last? someone asked, and the others pretended they did not think of it this way, but honestly they did—lasting meant duration, a mark of weakness or strength. I’d loved the city the way I loved boys, without pride. Maybe it had only loved me for a moment, but I’d kept loving and loving—walking those crowded streets, fumbling for another touch.

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” my mother said. “But I suppose I don’t have to.”

“We’re not starting a life together,” I said. “It’s just a holding pattern. A way to get to know each other for a little while.”

“This isn’t about her,” she said. “It’s about you walking out on your own life.”

“I’m living my own life.”

“I hope you don’t think you can save her. I know you want to try.”

“That’s what Tom said.”

“Maybe he was right.”

I didn’t say anything.

She sighed and asked, “How are you getting out there, anyway? Is there a plan?”

We were driving a U-Haul west. I sold my furniture, flew out to Lovelock, and helped her pack. Tilly didn’t have many possessions, but she was very particular about keeping them safe—those cats in their winter mittens, clutching cocoa mugs the size of toenails. It turned out all the cats were gifts from Abe, one each Christmas. “It was habit,” Tilly explained. “He probably couldn’t think of what else to get.” There was room left in the U-Haul once we were finished loading it. “I thought I had more stuff,” she said, apologetic. “I guess we didn’t need a whole truck.”

The drive was long and hot, blurred into hours of sore-limbed fatigue and soggy french fries. We measured time by the gutted rumbling of our truck’s broken fan and the growing rashes of sunburn across our window-facing cheeks.