When she finally left for good, she didn’t say she wasn’t coming back. She sat down on the edge of my bed and brushed my hair off my face and said she had to go to Europe—that my father needed her with him. But she said she’d see me soon. I assumed that meant she’d be back soon—she was always coming and going. But I missed it. The language of it. “Seeing me soon” meant she was never coming back, not in a substantial way. It meant I’d spend an afternoon or an evening with her twice a year (never overnight).

It meant she was lost to me.

That’s the part that I missed: My mother didn’t care enough not to be lost to me.

That’s the part I’ve sworn to myself I would never miss again.

I don’t know if Owen is guilty. And I’m furious he left me to deal with this alone. But I know he cares. I know he loves me. And, more than that, I know he loves Bailey.

He would only leave for her. It has to be that. He left the way he did to try and save her. From something or someone.

It all comes down to Bailey.

The rest is just a story.

The sunlight streams through the undraped living room windows, soft and yellow, against the harbor.

I stare outside. I don’t turn on the television or flip open my laptop to check the newsfeed. I know the most important thing. Owen is still gone.

I head upstairs to shower and find Bailey’s door uncharacteristically open, Bailey sitting up in her bed.

“Hey there,” I say.

“Hi,” she says.

She pulls her knees to her chest. She looks so scared. She looks like she is trying hard to hide it.

“Can I come in for a sec?” I say.

“Sure,” she says. “I guess.”

I walk over and sit down on the edge of her bed—as if that is something I know how to do, as if that is something I’ve done before.

“Did you sleep at all?” I say.

“Not much,” she says.

The outline of her toes is visible through the sheets. She curls them tight together, like a fist. I start to reach for her foot, hold it, but then think better of it. I clasp my hands together and look around her room. Her bedside table is littered with theater books and plays. Her blue piggy bank rests on top of them—the piggy bank that Owen won for her at a school fair shortly after they moved to Sausalito. It’s a female piggy bank, complete with bright red cheeks and a bow on top.