It had been a long time since Rebecca had sat in the passenger seat with her eldest child. Since Alexa had procured a driver’s license and the Jeep she’d become so independent that at times she seemed more lodger than daughter. But here she was, her face washed clean of makeup, her hair in a messy bun, wearing pajama shorts that were for some reason designed to look like men’s boxer shorts, driving her mother home, with no shoes on, which Rebecca thought was probably illegal.

How strange it was: you raised these people from their most miniature, floppiest, most dependent suckling form, and then when they were scarcely grown you helped them get a laminated piece of paper and you sent them off in these hulking, crushable monsters of steel and rubber, and you hoped for the best. (Was Alexa hugging the right side of the road a little more than she should?)

They were crossing the bridge now, back into Newburyport, and Rebecca looked at all of the boats in the harbors on both sides of the river, the sun glancing off the water. It was one of prettiest sights in the world to Rebecca, the view from this bridge in the summer, and she’d put it up against the sun setting over the Blue Ridge Mountains or the fjords of Norway, although she hadn’t actually seen either of those places in person.

“It just goes so fast,” said Rebecca. The car sailed over the last piece of the bridge and stopped behind a line of cars waiting to turn toward town. “Do you feel like it’s going really fast? Life?”

Alexa made a face and said, “Absolutely not. I feel like every day lasts about a week and a half.”

“One day,” said Rebecca, “you will be being driven around by your own children, and you will see what I mean. I, at that point, will be toothless and infirm somewhere.”

The Jeep idled. “Don’t be dramatic,” said Alexa. “You’ll probably have teeth.” She flicked her tongue out, lizard quick, as she waited for the last two cars in front of her to disperse, and that made Rebecca think that she could still see her in there somewhere: the girl who used to stick out her tongue in the very same way when she was tying her sneakers at age seven. Further back in time, the girl who, when Rebecca packed her up in the middle of the night to move her out of a situation that was no longer safe, didn’t ask, Where are we going? but instead asked, When will we get there?—a question that showed such a survivor’s determination and such faith in her tattered, shattered mother that Rebecca set her shoulders back and understood at once that she had to make herself worthy of that little girl’s trust.

“We need to start shopping for your dorm room soon, don’t we?”