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Cardinals calling from the pecan tree. Heavy, turpentine-tinged air.

Towering pines and baked blue sky. Bermuda grass struggling for purchase in the sandy lawn.

Crickets. Yellow flies. Spanish moss draping the live oak.

Ant lions dimpling the sand driveway. Vivian had been away for years, and yet it felt as if she’d never left.

As if she never fully could. But even now, that familiar adolescent desperation to get out, escape, go somewhere, anywhere but here, plagued her. Hahira wasn’t home. Was Oregon?

She rocked on the porch, hoping to catch a breeze. Elizabeth joined her, must have sensed her restlessness. “It’s not the same without Mama, I know,” she said as she sat down.

“She wasn’t the same for me as she was for you,” said Vivian.

There was no resentment in her voice, no resentment in her heart.

At this point it was simply her accepted truth.

Her mother hadn’t been a real mother to her.

Oh, Clara Shaw had fed her and clothed her, but she hadn’t really taken an interest. She’d left that to Elizabeth and Clelia.

They’d done their best, Vivian supposed, but they’d never filled the mother-shaped hole in Vivian’s heart.

Elizabeth snapped her fingers. “Vivian!”

“Sorry. Daydreaming, I guess.”

“Vivian, do you have a daughter?”

“That was a paperwork error, Elizabeth. The military makes them daily.”

“A man called while you were out at Clelia’s. Someone named Patterson. Looking for you. You sure you don’t have a family you haven’t told me about?”

He had tracked her down. She dipped her head to hide her smile, surprised by how pleased she was.

“He said your friend Georgeanne had passed and you weren’t at the funeral.”

Vivian stifled a cry. She’d imagined that by some magic her friend would win out, because didn’t George always win out?

And that if she didn’t—if she was right about not having much time left—Vivian would somehow sense this and return to her in time to say a final goodbye and hold George’s hand. Not that Vivian deserved that honor.

If only she’d told Ivy the truth the night she arrived at Vivian’s door wearing that periwinkle sweater, everyone might have been spared years of heartache and loss. Maybe Ivy would have allowed Vivian to fly her home. Maybe, at the very least, she wouldn’t have flown so far away from all of them.

George had been right, and Vivian had been wrong. And she’d made everything worse by hiding from George at the end. Running away when she should have been at her friend’s side, fighting for her. With her. Another unforgivable thing she’d done to Ruth.

Motherless, sisterless Ruth. She deserved more than a mother-shaped hole in her heart. She deserved the truth. And if she couldn’t forgive that truth, well, Vivian would have to live with that.

“Elizabeth, I need to go to Oklahoma.”

“Your friend’s funeral was days ago.”

“I know, but there’s someone there I need to talk to.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s gone back to Oregon. He said to tell you that’s where he’d be. He said, ‘You tell her I’m waiting.’ A man waiting for you in Oregon, but you want to go to Oklahoma. I will never understand you, Viv.”

“I know,” said Vivian. “I won’t even begin to try to make you.”

George’s house was curtained and dark. Vivian ran a hand along the underside of the porch glider but found no spare key taped there now. George and Tom had argued about that. Now George was gone, and Tom had his way.

In the stuffy phone booth at the airfield, she found a number but no address listed for R.

Rutledge. She considered just calling. She wouldn’t even have to admit she was in Enid.

She could pretend she was checking in, ask how Ruth was doing, listen to her say that given the circumstances she was doing okay.

They could make all the correct noises at one another across the phone lines, and then Vivian could carry on with her life and leave Ruth to hers.

Because how could Ruth possibly understand?

What kind of mother abandons her baby? If you had seen your parents on their wedding day, she imagined telling Ruth, how golden and perfect they were, you would have wanted to give them all the babies in the world to raise.

You would have thought to yourself, I could never measure up to that.

She set the receiver back in its cradle, then lifted it again and called a taxi to take her to the country club.

If anyone would give her an honest accounting of George’s last days, it would be Helen, who’d never approved of her and must like her even less now.

Because Helen had been there, and Vivian had not.

Helen strode into the club with her racket propped on one shoulder.

She looked remarkably fresh for someone who’d just finished bounding around the court.

Vivian had watched her play a few points, admiring Helen’s sure ground strokes, the way she announced the score in a firm voice before each serve.

When she’d caught sight of Vivian, Helen had extended her racket toward her like a queen pointing a scepter and said, “I’m almost done out here.

We can have lunch in the bar afterward. The tuna salad is surprisingly good. ”

The tuna salad was excellent. It provided some comfort while Helen described George’s last days.

And Ruth’s troubles. Helen had a friend in administration at the hospital, and this friend had confided that Ruth skated on thin ice in her department.

Not to mention, Helen had set Ruth up with a nice man—in insurance and doing very well.

“I mean, he could have his pick! Well, he went to collect her at the time they had arranged, and Ruth’s door was answered by—oh, I can’t even talk about it, it’s so upsetting.

“And I’ve offered to take her shopping, and to take her to get her hair done, and she always says maybe another time, but I know when I’m being put off.”

Eventually Helen wound down, and Vivian extracted Ruth’s address.

“Maybe you can do something with her, because she won’t listen to me. More like her sister by the day. Rest her soul,” added Helen. “Thank God George was already gone when they heard—that was a blessing. By the way, there was a man at the funeral asking about you.”

“I know,” said Vivian. Under Helen’s persistent stare, she added, “Don Patterson. He’s ... We’re ... I think we’re engaged.”

“Congratulations. You might give him a call. He seemed quite worried about you, your fiancé.”

Vivian reminded herself that she had once been a brave person. She’d tinkered with cars when no one thought she should. She’d run off with a barnstormer. She’d learned how to fly airplanes, and earned a living by continuing to fly them. All of this had taken courage and a fair dose of obstinance.

In her room at the Holiday Inn, she waited while the operator dialed her number in Oregon.

She was going to do two brave things today.

The first would be telling Patterson what he needed to know about her, that if he wanted to back out, she’d understand.

Because she couldn’t protect him from what had happened.

Trying to do that was wearing her out. She didn’t think he’d leave because she’d been raped—he was too solid, too good a man for that.

But he might leave because she’d hidden it from him all these years.

And that secrecy had kept him at a distance.

He’d have every right to view it as a type of lie.

“Collect call from Vivian Shaw,” said the operator.

“Vivian. Thank God.”

By the end of it, she was sobbing, and he was silent. Stricken speechless, she supposed. She took one ragged breath after another, trying to get control of herself. When she could speak again, she said he could take what he wanted from the apartment, anything at all. But he interrupted.

“Just come home, Viv. Please. I wish to God that hadn’t happened to you. But it doesn’t change how I feel. I know who you are. You’re exactly what I want—all of you. Come home.”

Two hours later, she stood on Ruth’s doorstep. The call to Don hadn’t taken long. But recovering from it had required a shower and a change of clothes. Fresh lipstick and powder. The car she’d borrowed from Helen hadn’t needed gas, but she’d stopped and topped it off anyway.

She’d hoped it might feel easier, once she told Don, to tell Ruth.

But the call had left her jittery and drained and fearful of Ruth’s response.

Because Ruth would want to know how Vivian could have handed her to George and stepped onto that Greyhound bus.

Five hundred dollars in her purse. Cash George had pressed into her hand at the last moment.

Blood money. Child money. Don’t-come-back money? Vivian had always wondered.

That day at the bus depot, she’d assumed it would be as easy to leave George as it had been to leave Hahira and her family.

But George, it turned out, was firmly planted in the sandy soil of her heart.

Their continued relationship hadn’t been about Ruth.

Vivian rarely thought about the baby—she couldn’t allow herself to.

Ruth and Ivy were a unit. “The babies.” George’s daughters.

And Tom’s. Never hers. How could she possibly explain this to Ruth?

Vivian knocked. Then knocked again, louder. No one answered. She peeked through the front window and noticed that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree when it came to housekeeping, when someone behind her said, “May I help you?”

She turned, and the young woman jumped. “Oh! I thought I’d seen a ghost for a minute. You look so much like Ruth’s mother.”

Vivian held out her hand. “Vivian Shaw,” she said. And wanted desperately, for the first time in her life, to add, I am Ruth’s mother.

“Kimberly Peale. I work at St. Mary’s. With Ruth. I heard she called in sick today, so I came to check on her.”

“She’s not answering,” said Vivian.

“I was afraid of that. She’s probably at the Jet Way. Maybe the Control Tower.”

“I see,” said Vivian. “Helen mentioned something about her spending a lot of time in bars. To Helen that could mean five minutes, so I took it with a grain of salt.”

“Well, much as I hate to agree with Helen about anything ...”

“I see,” said Vivian again.

“I hauled her home twice last week, and to be honest, I’m not sure I have a third in me. My husband doesn’t like it. And if she doesn’t start showing up at work soon, she won’t have a job anymore. Not that she seems to care.”

“I’ll do it,” said Vivian. “I’ll make sure she gets home tonight. I’ll talk to her.” For all the good it’ll do, she thought.

“Try the Jet Way first,” said Kimberly. “That’s where she usually starts.”