Page 79 of What's in a Kiss?

“No, but—”

A dark cloud spreads across his face. It’s the face he made when I said I wanted to talk to Masha at her reception.

“What?” I ask, my chest tightening with dread.

“I should have known, your birthday’s coming up,” he says sadly. “Every year around this time, you talk about reaching out—”

“What stops me?”

He sighs. “Olivia, you know your mom—she’s not—”

“Okay, I understand. There’s history here—”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“But something’s different today.I’mdifferent—”

“Olivia, you always have the best intentions, but—”

“Please, Jake. Will you come with me to try?”

••••••

I take thewheel for the short drive to my mom’s house. Feeling optimistic, I turn on one of her recent podcast episodes. A woman from Oklahoma wants to know if she should reconnect with an old flame.

“It depends,” Lorena says, “on your reasons. Do you want the flame back because you’re lonely?”

“I want the flame back because my town’s population is eight hundred and seventy-two. Everyone else is taken.”

“What are you doing talking to me? Run, don’t walk, Oklahoma!”

I can’t help enjoying the sound of my mother’s voice, but Jake’s knuckles are white on the armrests, his jaw clenched tight. He seems to be girding himself for ugliness.

But he doesn’t know Lorena like I do.

“I promise you, Paula,” my mother says to the next caller. “When your sister sees your minivan pull up, it will be hard to hold a grudge.”

“Hear that?” I say.

Jake gives me an incredulous look. “Since when do you take Lorena’s podcasts at face value? This is a woman who never once came to visit you in New York, who barely smiled or even spoke to either of us at our wedding—” He breaks off as I park the car. “Olivia?”

“What?” I say, unfastening my seat belt and looking through the window at my mother’s house. The sight fills me with safety and warmth. The things he just said about my mom are painful, but they’re only true in one world. Where I come from, our love is unbreakable, and that’s got to count for something.

Jake watches me, waiting.

“Let’s go,” I say, opening the car door. Gram Parsons spills out and we cross my childhood lawn. I slide off my shoes, letting my feet sink into the familiar grass, thick and cool and spiky. I hatched a hundred dreams running through this grass.

“Olivia?” Jake says calmly.

“Jake?”

“Your mother hasn’t lived here in years.”

“Oh,” I say, suddenly unable to breathe. “I know that. I just wanted some inspiration.”

I swallow. I’m crushed and have no idea what to do. Where to go. Of course this isn’t her house. Of course my mom moved on. She only lived in this duplex in the version of life where I held her back. When I left for college, my mother found her way on her own. She’s famous now and good at what she does. She’s vanished from my life.

I don’t want to leave my yard, the orange tree still bearing the swing my mom hung for me twenty years ago. Looking closer, I see the painful signs that someone else lives here now. My mom would tend her flowers with far more love and care. Toy trucks line the porch. This is someone else’s childhood now.