She couldn’t forget that moment at the airport. Liza had hugged her so tightly she’d thought her ribs might crack. I love you.

Kathleen had patted her, unable to shake the feeling that she was failing her daughter again.

What was Liza doing now? She almost wished she hadn’t stayed with them before her trip because now her daughter was constantly on her mind. Liza was the one who put in the hard work maintaining a relationship with Kathleen too. Any deficiencies were not her fault.

Kathleen reached into her bag for her sunglasses. It was a scorching day, the sun blazing through the glass into the cool car.

Those cocktails were making her maudlin.

Presumably Martha was suffering a similar attack of regret because yesterday’s chatter and enthusiasm had been replaced by tense silence.

Her gaze was fixed intently on the road in front as if it were an enemy to be defeated. Her lips moved slightly, as she conducted a silent conversation with herself.

Kathleen realized the girl hadn’t said a word aloud since they’d climbed into the car.

Martha had checked Kathleen’s seat belt three times and would have checked it a fourth had Kathleen not pointed out calmly that they were going for a drive, not space travel, and that the heavy crush of traffic seemed to preclude any racing tendencies that might be built into their rather flashy vehicle.

“Are you all right, dear?” Kathleen had welcomed Martha’s endless, bubbly chatter. It made her feel young again and gave her something to focus on other than her aching bones and unsettling thoughts. And it wasn’t as if their verbal exchanges were deep or probing. Apart from that one innocent query about whether Kathleen had visited California, there were no uncomfortable questions to deflect. It was Kathleen’s idea of perfect conversation. But from the moment Martha had helped Kathleen into the car, she’d stopped chattering and now her eyes—slightly wild, Kathleen thought—were fixed on the road as if she was braced for catastrophe.

“I’m concentrating. It’s—busy.”

It was a city, so of course it was busy. But Kathleen didn’t believe in stating the obvious, so she stayed silent and drank in the experience. Cars thronged bumper to bumper, crawling forward to a soundtrack of shouts and blaring horns. Drivers made sudden turns without giving any prior indication of their intentions. On top of that, navigating the route had proved challenging—a fact Kathleen considered to add an extra frisson of excitement, but which had caused Martha to breathe deeply several times and had no doubt added to her stress and punctured ebullience.

And now they were creeping along the edge of Lake Michigan with the Chicago skyline towering above them.

Kathleen felt she should say something reassuring. “I’m sure it will calm down once we leave Chicago.”