I think about that wedding dress woman and the tickle of her copper hair on my cheek. “I don’t remember enough,” I say, because memories of my mom don’t always come when I call them. “But she was really pretty and people liked her, and she hated waiting for me.”

“What do you mean?” Carly pokes at the fire with a stick, pushing embers toward the center.

“Like she’d take me to the playground, but if there was no one interesting for her to talk to, she’d want to turn around and go home.”

“And she just left?”

“Yeah,” I say. I’m not sure if Carly meant for good, or from the playground, but it’s true both ways. I remember the shock in my shins from jumping off the swings when I was worried I wouldn’t be able to catch up with her.

“If it makes you feel any better, it’s not great having a mom who stays when she doesn’t want to,” Carly says. “It’s hard to watch how bad she wants her whole life to be different. How she settles for keeping the peace.”

Carly throws another bomb of wet leaves on the fire, and we watch the fury it makes.

“What do you want?” I ask, because I don’t know how a person is supposed to piece a life together. I don’t want to be my dad or my mom or even Margo. I don’t want to be my math teacher, or Matty’s mom, or Irene. I know my life can’t ever look like the people on TV, but I don’t know what there is to want that’s available to me.

“Like really want? Like in all of it?” She takes the last drag, tosses her cigarette butt into the fire.

I nod.

“I don’t know,” Carly says. “I think maybe it’s not a thing I want to be or stuff I want to have. It’s like—I just don’t want to feel wrong, you know?”

“Yeah,” I say, and I think I do.

“Rosemary always made me feel…” Carly pulls a loose cigarette from her jacket pocket, holds it between her fingers as if she’s already been smoking it. “I don’t know. She made me feel like she would love me completely if I were just a little bit better than I am.” She holds the cigarette with the tips of her fingers and sweeps it at the flames, pulling it back to her mouth fast, puffing furiously to get the light to take. “News flash! This is the best I’ve got.” She looks sad. Disappointed in herself, the way I was every single time I thought I could win my dad back from Irene by memorizing Dylan songs or sewing the loose buttons on his work shirts.