“You are an excellent mother.”

She says the words with gusto. It’s as though she delivers a stamp with each syllable to make sure they etch onto my heart.

Both sets of words—hers and mine—hang in the air between us. I hope she’s right.

“Ethan knows he has you in his corner. That’s the biggest thing, Palm.”

“Yes, but . . .”

I pull the lever on the side of the recliner and sit upright. My exhale is long and strangled. I don’t know why I’m going here—getting all philosophical about life—but I blame it on the hour. Things always feel heavier at night.

“I’ve had to raise myself alongside raising Ethan. I look at some of the choices I made now, and I see what I did wrong—I see the errors of my ways.”

“You make it sound like you sold heroin on the street corner.”

I snort. “Obviously I didn’t do that. I’d have more money.”

Val throws a pillow at me, barely missing the side of my head. The action makes us both laugh.

She turns the television back up, but I can’t get into the shrimp on the screen. I also can’t seem to get away from the thoughts in my head.

I should’ve done a lot of things differently in my life. My relationship with Jared went on far too long, even though I was convinced that it was the right thing to do. Of course, him telling me that we would get married and he would settle down as soon as he got a job (or a promotion once he had a job), or once we’d saved enough for a house, or right after the holidays didn’t help. But I let that continue when I should’ve been making moves for our future—mine and Ethan’s.

And my choice to date Charlie wasn’t much better, really. It was a variation of the Jared game plan—I just need a bit more time, he said—but at least I was able to cut the cord on that much faster. So I did grow . . . in some ways.

Therapy helped me to see that I was picking essentially the same man over and over again. I was subconsciously picking men like my father. Men who were emotionally unavailable. Men who wouldn’t commit. Men who had an out. Men who abused my trust, just in different ways. Men who wouldn’t support me or love me or give me faith in a future—and I did that because it was what I knew.

I have to give myself grace for it. I didn’t know any better.

But now I do.

Now I have no excuse. I have to do better for me and my son.

“He really liked baseball yesterday,” I say, my heart warming as I remember how he slept with his glove last night. “He talked all day about how much it stinks that they don’t have practice until tomorrow.”

Val presses against the couch until she’s sitting up. “Speaking of baseball, the word at Fletcher’s this afternoon was that Cole is the coach. I’m assuming not Ethan’s coach because you definitely would’ve called me about that. Right, best friend?”