Chapter 24: March Ninth

I walked down the length of the porch alone.

Mom didn't turn her head until I stopped beside the wicker chair.

Up close she looked smaller, with a crease between her brows and a coat that needed pressing.

"Phillip won't let me in the house," she said. "He says I've embarrassed him."

"Then why are you here?"

"I wanted to see if you'd send me away."

"Is that what you came for?"

"I don't know." She laughed, a dry sound. "I've been sitting here an hour. I thought I'd have something to say."

I waited.

"I was afraid of you," Mom said. "From the first day. You had his chin. You looked at me as if you could see what I'd done."

"I hadn't done anything yet."

"No. I had."

She stood.

For a second I thought she would try to touch me.

She didn't.

"I won't ask you to forgive me," she said.

"Good."

"I'd like to ask you something else. Is Savannah all right?"

I thought of a girl on a curb, with four twenties in her fist.

"She's on a bus," I said. "That's all I know."

Mom nodded slowly.

She walked off the porch and down the gravel to a taxi that must have been waiting around the bend.

She didn't look back.

I didn't wait to watch her go.

On March ninth, the lake was still half frozen, and the trees stood bare against a white sky.

I woke up in the guest room at the lake house with a man's arm over my waist.

Luka opened one eye.

"Happy birthday," he said into the pillow. "You're twenty-one. Legally, you can have a drink and run a company."

"I'd rather have the eggs."

"The eggs are a threat."

"Make the eggs."

He made the eggs, and they were good.

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