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Vivian spent the night on Ruth’s couch. Not sleeping, as the couch was somewhat shorter than she was.

But it had seemed imperative to stay, even after Ruth began snoring in the other room.

As soon as the mourning doves called, she gave up on sleep.

She rose and washed the pile of dirty dishes, wiped down the sticky countertops, swept the floor.

All the things she never thought to help other women with, she did on this beautiful morning for Ruth.

She sensed George’s hand in the design of the house.

The rooms were small but well laid out. Windows and doors placed just right.

The window over Ruth’s kitchen sink looked out on a flowering shrub.

Elizabeth would know what it was. George and Adele would have known.

Wasn’t that the sort of thing real mothers knew?

A wave of longing for her friend swamped her. She had been selfish. She had been weak. Too weak to stay at George’s side. Too weak to call after Ivy died. Far too selfish and weak for far too long.

She brewed a pot of coffee and lit a cigarette.

Ruth didn’t have much food in the house.

She’d go to the store later and take care of that.

An image of George writing out her daily shopping list rose before her, and she had to sit down and put her head in her hands.

When she looked up, Ruth stood in the kitchen doorway.

Vivian ashed her Winston and dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. “Sorry. I was just thinking of George.”

Ruth shot her a look that said, “Better late than never,” and went to pour herself a cup of coffee.

The percolator shook in her hands. Coffee splattered on the countertop.

She looked thin and tired and older than her years.

Vivian wanted to fetch her some aspirin.

But that was exactly what a mother would do. She didn’t have the right.

“It was unforgivable,” she said. “Me not being here with her at the end.”

Ruth leaned against the counter, silent. Sipped from her cup.

“Unforgivable that I didn’t call about Ivy.”

Ruth sipped again.

“I am so sorry, Ruth. For all of it.”

Ruth pushed away from the counter and joined her at the table, nudged the ashtray toward her. Vivian glanced at her cig, caught sight of the slump of ash just in time, and quickly stubbed it out. “And I’m sorry about last night—it wasn’t my place to interfere. I have no right.”

Still nothing from Ruth. Vivian reminded herself that she wasn’t entitled to anything.

Not forgiveness. Not a single word of speech.

She forged on. “I gave up all my rights. For a long time, I thought that was the best thing. Because I couldn’t have done half as good a job as your mom did. I still can’t.”

Ruth stared into her now-empty cup.

“I’m not strong like she was, and I’m sorry for that too.

But I did what I thought would be best. I gave you two good parents—not perfect, I know—and a sister.

I’m not sorry for that. George wanted to tell you all about it.

That’s why I left when she ... I couldn’t face it.

I was sure you’d both hate me. Maybe you do. You should. I’m a coward.”

A blue jay complained from a nearby oak tree. Locusts tuned up their late-morning static. A breeze stirred the flowering shrub. The sun beat against the window and brightened the kitchen.

Ruth’s voice, when she finally spoke, was soft, almost a whisper. “I think she tried to tell me, near the end. But she was too far gone.”

“She was waiting, hoping to tell both of you. I wish Ivy were here too. That’s the way your mom wanted it.” Vivian took a deep breath. “But you’re here. And I’m ready to tell you the whole thing. If you’re ready to hear it.”

Ruth stood and refilled her coffee cup, then topped off Vivian’s. “Okay,” she said.

Vivian fixed her gaze on the wall just over Ruth’s shoulder and began.

When she finished, she said, “You probably have questions. Go ahead. You can ask anything.” Now that she had said it, she could look directly at her daughter.

Ruth’s eyes were wet. Her voice trembled when she spoke. “Did you hate me?”

“Never.” Vivian removed the coffee cup from Ruth’s hands—capable, womanly hands she wished she’d held more often while they still belonged to a child—and clutched them in her own.

“Not once. But I was a mess. I couldn’t .

.. It was the best thing I could think to do.

I couldn’t bear to give you to a stranger. ”

The blue jay filled the silence with its shrieking. “What else?” asked Vivian. “Ask me anything.”

Ruth pulled her hands away and stared at the windowpaned sun patch on the kitchen floor.

Then looked up at Vivian with a defiant glint in her eye.

Vivian braced herself. This was the moment Ruth would send her away, tell her to never come back.

She’d never hated Ruth, but Ruth had every right to hate her.

This time Ruth’s voice was steady and sure. “She left me the Cessna. Could you teach me to fly it?”

Vivian startled, and Ruth folded her arms across her chest. “You probably think I should sell it,” she said. “Everyone else does. Dad keeps offering to talk to his pilot friends. Helen says someone at the club wants it.”

“No,” said Vivian. It was a beautiful plane.

Curves and swagger, comfort and power in just the right measure.

Vivian remembered stalling it into George’s last flat spin, the final time she’d heard George really laugh.

“I’m glad you want to keep it. Of course I’ll teach you.

If you feel up to it, we can start today. But you need to eat something first.”

“Do you think she realized I hated that she flew?” asked Ruth as she buckled into the seat beside Vivian.

George had suspected, but what did it matter now? “Why didn’t you want her to fly?” Vivian asked.

“It’s not that I didn’t want her to. Well, maybe I didn’t. I mean, it never felt safe to me. Even though Dad flew all the time. It never felt like something a mom was supposed to do.”

“Well, she wasn’t like most moms.”

“No, she wasn’t. I resented it sometimes. And it scared me. Especially after Dad left.”

“Because you worried she’d leave too?”

“She could have. She and Frank. We had Grandma Adele. We would have been fine. Not really, but in theory.”

“She never would have done that. Not in a million years.” I am never going to leave you again, not in a million years, Vivian thought.

“Yeah, I know that now, but when you’re a kid ...”

Ruth’s hands trembled as she placed them on the controls.

“Don’t be nervous,” said Vivian. “This is going to be easy as pie today.” She smiled, because easy as pie sounded like something George would say. “We have a clear sky. We’ve got low wind. And I’ve taught tons of people how to fly—people far less capable than you.”

“Okay,” said Ruth.

“Ready, then?”

“Ready.”

Vivian launched into her intro of the dash and controls.

She talked through the takeoff. Once they reached altitude, she demonstrated steering, climbing, descending, narrating everything she did, keeping it simple and clear.

After a while she asked, “See anyone else around up here?” When Ruth, leaning forward to check the blind spot on the right, confirmed that the sky was clear, Vivian said, “Okay, you take her.”

Ruth kept the plane pointed straight ahead.

After a while, she nudged it to the south and grinned.

Then to the west, and whooped. Vivian whooped too.

She relished the moment when a student fell in love with flying, with the power of the plane and their sense of authority over it.

“Remember your blind spot,” she said, and Ruth steered beautifully into an S turn to open up her view.

She was a natural. Vivian hated to reclaim the controls when it was time to land.

She wanted to stay aloft forever, watching Ruth navigate the vast American sky.

“Can we go up again tomorrow?” Ruth asked as they taxied in. Her eyes sparkled, and the color was up in her cheeks.

Vivian, thinking back to her first flight, said, “That’s how I felt after my first lesson with Louis.”

“Who’s Louis?”

“Louis was a barnstormer. He taught me how to fly.” Ruth listened intently as Vivian told her about Louis and the barnstorming circuit, about running away from home to learn to fly.

“You must miss him,” she said when Vivian finished.

Vivian set the brakes and locked the controls. “Now and then. But I have someone I miss much more now.”

“Oh. You probably need to get home,” said Ruth.

It was true. Don had waited for her for so, so long.

Even before she’d left Oregon, he’d been waiting for her.

But hadn’t Ruth waited even longer? “I’ll call him,” said Vivian.

“And sure, we can go up again tomorrow.” Then, remembering the nurse who’d found her on Ruth’s doorstep, she added, “That is, if you don’t have to work. ”

She hoped Ruth didn’t. She wanted to remain in the Cessna, talking with her daughter, telling her stories.

She dreaded the moment Ruth climbed back through the cabin and out of the plane.

Because then Vivian would return to her lonely room at the Holiday Inn.

And she still had so much to tell Ruth. About meeting George.

About Sweetwater and Camp Davis and all the places that came after.

“I think I’m about to get fired,” said Ruth.

“Your friend—Kimberly—she said she was worried about that.”

“You met Kimberly?”

Vivian described their doorstep encounter. “She seems very concerned about you.”

“Hah,” scoffed Ruth. Her jaw worked, and her cheeks reddened. She nodded to herself as if committing to a dare, then faced Vivian and said, “I don’t really like my job. But it’s a way to stay close to her, to still see her now and then. Kimberly was my girlfriend.”

It took Vivian a moment to realize Ruth meant more than someone to go shopping with.

She wondered if George had known. Then wondered if this was some sort of test. The look in Ruth’s eyes suggested it might be.

Well, she was determined to pass it. “My aunt, Clelia. She had a girlfriend.” It was the wrong word, but it was the best one Vivian had. “Her name was Rosemary.”

“And people knew?”

“I knew. If other people did, they kept it to themselves.” One more item on the too-long list of things no one talked about. “You can tell me about her. Kimberly. I’d like to hear.”

Ruth fiddled with her seat belt. “There’s not much to tell anymore. She’s married. And she’s having a baby.”

“I’m sorry, Ruth.”

She felt furious with that tiny nurse. Standing on Ruth’s doorstep, pretending concern, when she was just assuaging her own guilt over abandoning her.

Vivian knew all about that kind of guilt.

“I know it’s not the same, but Louis—the pilot I told you about—he didn’t really love me.

He was ... keeping me and leaving me all at the same time.

I finally realized he wasn’t strong enough to call it quits. I had to be the one to go.”

“You think I should quit?”

Vivian was too tired and angry to bite her tongue, to refrain from offering advice she hadn’t earned the right to give. “Only you can decide that, but if you’re just staying at that hospital for her, what’s the point?”