Alec wasn’t a bad guy; he just didn’t want to be a dad. He’d never pressured Jess to terminate the pregnancy, but he’d made it clear where he stood. In the end, Jess chose Juno over him, and they both had to live with that. He got to enjoy his twenties, but every one of their friends thought he was an asshole; Jess got a delightful child but had to learn how to hustle to make ends meet. She never regretted her choice for a single breath, though, and was pretty sure he hadn’t, either.

Heavy with exhaustion, Jess switched the lamp off and slipped quietly out of the room, startling in the hallway when the doorbell pierced the silence. Pops left his glasses at Jess’s more nights than he didn’t, and pulling her sweater tighter around her chest, Jess walked quietly to the living room to peek out the window. But it wasn’t Pops.

It was Jamie.

Jess used to feel a potent mix of reactions when she saw her mother—relief, anxiety, excitement—but at this point it was primarily dread, and as a mother herself now, she found that realization so deeply bleak.

Taking a deep, bracing breath, Jess hesitated with her hand on the knob before opening the door. Jamie Davis had worn many labels—cocktail waitress, addict, stadium usher, girlfriend, recovering addict, homeless—but none of them had ever been “devoted mother.” On the rare occasion she had shown up to one of Jess’s school events or a softball game she was usually hungover—sometimes still drunk—and reeking of cigarettes or marijuana. She would make a show, cheering for Jess, being proud of her. Sometimes she would bring a group of her rowdy friends calling themselves “Jessie’s Cheering Squad.” Inside, Jess would die of embarrassment, and then panic that Jamie would see it all over her face, that she would leave in a fit of anger and not come around again for weeks.

And there she was, still beautiful—she’d always been beautiful—but with a powdery finish to her beauty now, something both artificial and dull. A lifetime of bad habits had finally caught up.

“My girl!” Jamie pushed forward, wrapping her daughter in a quick one-armed hug before stepping back and shoving a set of bath bombs in Jess’s hands. They’d started to disintegrate inside the cellophane, and the brightly colored dust leaked out onto Jess’s fingers. She knew her mother well enough to guess Jamie had bought them as an afterthought while grabbing a pack of menthol lights at the convenience store down the street.

Jamie stepped around her and into the dark living room.

“Hey,” Jess said, closing the door. “What’s the occasion?”

Her mother set her giant purse on the coffee table and looked at her, wounded. Her lipstick slowly bled up into the tiny lines around her mouth. “I can’t see my baby on her twenty-eighth birthday?”

Jess didn’t point out that Jamie was off by two years, or the many other birthdays she’d missed. Frankly Jess was surprised her mom remembered her birth date at all; her sporadic visits weren’t generally timed to life events.