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“Get out of here, beforeIkill you,” I said.

I found myself twirling my wedding ring around and around; it had been on my finger for so many years. Sometimes it was hard to remember my life before marriage, when the biggest decision I had to make in the morning was whether to have a Café Americano or an iced green tea before picking out a cute outfit and heading to my job as a senior editor at Shier and Boggs publishing. My best friend, Ellen, still worked there and got to have deep conversations with interesting people, and I got to scrub melted Rocky Road ice cream off my counters.

I raised the shades in my kitchen. The morning light danced in the room as it reflected off the snow. I had lived in Shelton, Connecticut, my whole life. When I was a kid, there were about twenty-seven thousand people, and now there were more like forty-one thousand. Our town had gone from mom-and-pop shops to Targets, Staples, and Starbucks, although we still had a few quaint cafés and a lake where everyone fed the ducks. We also had one independent bookstore,Written Words, which had been here since I was a kid. When Gia was four, I took her there to hear a man in a Sammy the Whale costume read stories. She was so scared of the guy—and all whales for that matter—that when her grandmother gave her a toy stuffed whale, she freaked out. Needless to say, she’s never been to SeaWorld.

Shelton was only forty minutes from a big city, yet our house backed up to the woods, woods that seemed to go on forever. When I looked out my back door, it often felt as if I was alone in nature. It was a feeling of peace yet also loneliness. I marveled at how the tall, barren trees covered in snow would bend down ever so slightly. And the ground free of footprints, except for the occasional raccoon that had run across the fresh powder to dump over the garbage can and spread wrappers from the chocolate that I denied eating. How I longed to leave my own footprints in the snowy woods. They were so inviting. Sometimes I thought about walking out my back door through the leafless trees. I would disappear for a while. Not forever, but at least a month. I wondered how long it would be before Jim or Gia noticed I was gone. Would it be today? Tomorrow? The next day? Would they notice when they got hungry and I wasn’t there to get them dinner? Would they miss me?

The phone rang again, and I knew I couldn’t keep ignoring it. “Hi, Mom,” I said.

“How did you know it was me?”

“We’ve talked about this. Your number comes up on my caller ID.” I wanted to say no one else would call repeatedly this early in the morning. How many weekends did she wake up my whole house?

“Why didn’t you answer the other two times I called?”

“I was busy getting Gia out the door.”

Mom was like the Energizer Bunny, up early and always moving. When she was younger, she never needed to diet; her hyperactivity kept her in shape. She was a young seventy-five-year-old, and only the creases in her hands revealed her age. “I wanted to tell you I bought the cutest dress yesterday,” she said.

“That’s nice.” I began tossing moldy strawberries from the fridge into the trash.

“And I wore it to lunch with Cayla and Jill.”

“Great.”

“They loved it. Said I looked ten years younger.”

As I moved on to the expired yogurt, she began describing the new restaurant they had gone to. I moved fromoohingandahingintouh-huhmode. Mom went on to tell me about every dish she and her friends tried and how the chef came to their table and told them he had just gotten out of the hospital after a gallbladder attack. When she started talking about the waiter’s sister, I closed the fridge and told her I had to go, I had a lot to do. She said she understood and didn’t want to keep me.

As my finger hovered over the End Call button, she asked, “When was the last time you talked to your brother?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should talk to him more. You’re family.”

“I really don’t want to discuss this.”

“Fine, but someday it’ll just be the two of you. So, how’s my granddaughter?” she asked.

“She has a boyfriend.”

“How nice.”

“I’m not sure this guy has the best manners.”

“I remember the boys you went out with in high school. Talk about rude. There was that one boy who’d come over to pick you up, and he’d never even say hello to us. What was his name?” I knew exactly who she meant, but I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. “When you were young you were a terrible judge of character.” I wanted to drop the phone down the garbage disposal, but instead I took a swig of hot coffee directly from the pot, hoping it would burn my mouth so badly I couldn’t blurt out the twenty curse words I was thinking. “Your father kept saying you were a smart girl and you’d be fine. Thank God you found Jim when you did. He really straightened you out.”

“I really have to go, Mom.”

“Are you sure? We’re having such a nice chat.”

I had never been so sure of anything. “Dad’s expecting me. Bye.”

After I’d hung up, the sound of the ticking clock on the mantel became so loud it was all I could hear, that and my mother’s voice in my head. Over the years, I’d tried to ignore it, or pretend it didn’t affect me, but it did. Even at my age the things she said made me question my judgment, so I tried to avoid her.

I got in my car and turned the volume on the radio up full blast to drown out the noise in my head. After ten minutes and a handful of judgmental stares, I arrived at Brooklawn. With its celadon siding, white columns of ledger stone, and circular driveway, it looked more like a quaint hotel than an assisted living facility. An American flag and a Connecticut state flag blew in unison. Even though I’d been coming here at least once a week for the last nine months, every time I walked through the doors, a feeling of melancholy washed over me. I wanted to go back fifteen years to when my dad was a vibrant and active prosecutor with no health issues. I signed in and then made my way through old people with walkers trying to mow me down. I saw Julia, my favorite nurse, walking toward me. Even though she was in her mid-thirties and had a thick blue streak in her hair, I wished she were my mother. She’d comforted me when I cried the first time I saw my dad alone in his room, and she’d stood up for me when one of the doctors caught me sneaking our dog, Theo, in to see him.

I waited while Julia stopped to help an elderly woman who had her shirt on backward. She had the woman raise her arms over her head as she turned the shirt around, being very careful to keep it pulled down so the woman could maintain her dignity. As the woman walked away, Julia waved me over.