I wondered what Colleen had gotten for Christmas. Probably pit bull–themed T-shirts from her brothers and garnet jewelry from her parents. Maybe she got a new leotard for the ABT summer intensive audition, too. The Philadelphia one was on January eighteenth, she’d said. I wondered if I’d be talking to her by then. At times it felt possible. At others, not so much.

I stared at the text for a long time, hearing Colleen’s voice as I read it again.

Mom pushed my door open with her foot, holding a mug in each hand. Hot chocolate for Josie and me. She set the mugs down on my nightstand and then wandered over to my desk, gazing at my new picture. She looked like she had when Margot came over, like her drowning daughter might have been thrown a life jacket after all.

“I’m sorry I missed Josie’s solo,” I said.

“Have you told her that?”

“No.” Mom gave me a look. “She’s been ignoring me,” I said in my defense.

“Well, she probably thinks you’ve been ignoring her.” Mom hesitated slightly before sitting at the end of my bed. She used to sit there a lot before the injury. We’d talk about all kinds of things. Since the injury, though, I’d pretty much walled off my room.

Suddenly, a question from the back of my mind burst forward. “Do you ever miss Hawai‘i so much you wish you never left?” I hadn’t planned on asking her that, but lately, I’d wondered how other people felt about the things they’d lost.

Mom’s eyebrows went up slightly, but then her face settled back into the thoughtful expression it always wore as she thought about a question. That was eternally Mom. Always a professor. Any question you asked got a serious answer.

“When I first got here, and I was so overwhelmed by the expectations of the new job, all I could remember were the good things I’d left behind.” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “My whole life was there. I felt awful for leaving it. And guilty for dragging your dad here. And a little bit like I didn’t know who I was anymore.”

I nodded at that last part, impressed she was able to say it out loud so easily.

“And hardly anyone here looked like me,” Mom said, and smiled softly. “I knew there wouldn’t be as many Japanese-or Asian-American people in central Pennsylvania as there were in Hawai‘i, but my goodness. Knowing and seeing are two different things entirely. It was an adjustment.”

“Was it hard?” I asked.