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“Okay, Mom. Grandma says I gotta go.”

“I love you.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.” She looked at the phone, the call already ended, and indeed her battery was at 20 percent, so she should save it.

He’d been with her parents for a day. One and a half days and he was someone else. More than happy without her.

The tears started spilling over, and she tried to breathe through all that. She was being silly. Overreacting. She tried to think back to those parenting handbooks she’d read a million times over. She tried to think about what she’d tell a patient who was having similar feelings about their parenting.

But she couldn’t think beyond the persistent whisper.Failure. Failure. Failure. She couldn’t find her rational center over this twisting stab of pain and guilt. Shedidalways yell at him when they baked together because he never listened. She tried too hard to get him to read. If she’d been chill about it…

A sob escaped her mouth, and she slapped a hand to it, trying to muffle the sound. Trying to hide what an utter mess she really was.

“I’m just going to…” She started moving toward the hallway. She’d have her cry in Colin’s bedroom.

Another sob and it was hard to make her feet move. She should run and slam the door and hide and—

Gabe’s hand touched her shoulder. She tried to jerk away from it, but he simply turned her to face him and then pulled her into his chest. A hug. Firm and comforting.

This time, she couldn’t stop the sobs, no matter how hard she tried to breathe through them or swallow them down. She could only sob against the hard, warm comfort of his chest.

“Shh,” he murmured, stroking her hair.

She sucked in a halting breath. “He doesn’t need me,” she sobbed into his chest.

“Come on. He’s your kid. Of course he needs you.”

“He’s having more fun there. He’s…reading. He’s… I’mfailing.”

Gabe’s hand kept stroking her hair, a slow, calming movement that somehow made the sobbing ease, even if her tears didn’t.

“He’s with his grandparents. Grandparents are always more fun. They’re probably stuffing him with sweets and never making him sleep. He’s having the time of his life. You can’t compare.”

She looked up at him. He seemed so…sincere. So genuinely trying to make her feel better. It wasn’t that she was surprised he’d try to make her feel better, because he was kind. It was just that she didn’t think it would come from words and hugs.

Still his arm held her to him, there in the entrance to the hallway, his other hand at her hair. “My grandma died when I was like eight or something, but she used to sneak me candy and let me watch things I wasn’t supposed to. Grandparents are the fun ones, the ones who make your kid resent you. That’s how the world works.”

She laughed at that between the tears. “My grandma used to let me put sugar on my Rice Krispies, even though Mom specifically told her not to.”

“See?” He let her go, but then he was wiping her cheeks delicately. His big, rough hands being unreasonably gentle. “No reason to cry.”

She wanted to cry for a whole new reason, but that would be fatal or something. It would just kill her.

“What if I can’t get out?” she asked. “What if we’re stuck here for weeks? What if I miss Christmas with him? I’ve never missed a Christmas with him. Never not been with him on his birthday or mine or Valentine’s Day or even Columbus Day. I have never, ever been away from him for even a day.”

Gabe shrugged, and his expression was all kind regret. “You’re doing it right now. You’ll have to do more than that someday.”

She frowned. “That’s a mean thing to say.”

“No, it’s a practical thing to say. If you don’t accept that time marches on, you can’t march with it, and then you miss everything.”

“That’s very wise.” She blew out a breath. “I haven’t cried in front of anyone like this since…” She shook her head. “I can’t even remember when. I was alone when I found out about Dex, and I always hid if I was going to have a jag.”

“Blizzards are a bitch.”

She managed a laugh at that too, and she took note of the way he was starting to edge away. His instinct might have been to comfort, but he wasn’t comfortable with that instinct.