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James was sitting on the front steps reading a library book when they pulled into the driveway.

From afar, his limbs looked longer than Virgie realized, and the contours of his face were beginning to chisel, a boy on his march to puberty.

He jogged down to the driveway in shorts and sneakers, a tiny hole forming in the canvas near his big toe.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the regatta?” Virgie turned off the idling car and got out with a wide grin, still on a high from the flight. She’d thought he was racing that morning.

The boy’s hair was slicked back with gel, and he sucked in a breath like he had something important to say.

For a moment, Virgie thought he might profess his love for her young daughter.

“I was up late,” he said. His eyes tracked Betsy as she emerged from the car, clutching her stomach. “Can you play?”

She groaned, running to the back door. “I might yak.”

Virgie slammed the trunk. “We went flying in Wiley’s plane, and the movement didn’t agree with her.” There were plumlike circles under his eyes. “Why were you up late?”

The boy bent down to the ground, using his hands to trap a cricket.

“Got him!” James’s expression lit up—he was stuck at that confusing age where he had enough muscle to do twenty push-ups, but all he wanted was to play with his plastic soldier figurines.

He opened his cupped hands to give Virgie a peek at the creature.

“People think they’re so hard to catch, but I know how to make them feel safe. ”

“You watch everyone around you, don’t you? You know how to make your mother feel safe too.”

He didn’t take his attention off the cricket, and Virgie was set to give up on him saying anything more when he said quietly, “Sometimes she drinks from a bottle.”

Virgie crouched beside him, intuiting that he was sharing something important. “What kind of bottle?”

He licked his dry lips, keeping his gaze trained on the insect cupped in his hands. “I dunno. The red stuff usually makes her cry; the brown stuff just makes her mean.”

Pamela’s house had seemed so immaculate.

There hadn’t even been a bar cart. Then again, Virgie’s mother had hidden her bottles with the cleaning products under the kitchen sink.

It dawned on her then why James had continuously checked up on his mother in the kitchen when she’d come over to cook dinner for the first time.

“Why don’t you come inside for a while, dear. I’m sure Betsy will be ready to go watch the regatta after she recovers from this morning. Sound good?”

The child lowered his hands to the grass.

It took the cricket only a few hops to jump from sight, and James stood, pushing his hands in his pockets.

He followed Virgie up the house steps. “Do you know crickets have incredible vision?” he said.

“They can see all different directions at the same time.”

“Just like you,” she said. “You have seen so much.” A tender bruise palpated her chest, the memory of her own mother sitting outside on the patio of their house in broad daylight, a cigarette in one hand and a glass of water in the other.

Only years later did Virgie realize that it wasn’t water at all.

On the couch, Betsy had her color-drained cheeks pressed up against the back cushions while James worked on a puzzle.

She’d refused to leave the house since her stomach was still queasy with airsickness, and if she wasn’t going to the regatta, Aggie declared she wasn’t going either.

James followed suit, calling his mother to explain but finding no answer.

“What do ginger chews taste like?” James tried to fit a puzzle piece into the unfinished map of the continental United States.

Betsy adjusted her headband. “Dirty socks,” she said, and they fell into a pile of laughter.

Virgie left the two of them behind on the sofa and called her older girls into the kitchen.

They made clear their displeasure with well-timed huffs, the teenagers settling into the banquette, the sun streaming through the windows behind them.

“What are you going to torture us with now?” Aggie flicked a toast crumb across the table.

“Well, there’s something I want you to do with me.

” Maybe this was how she’d be closer to her girls, by teaching them just how much harder they would have to work in life.

Handing both of her daughters a stenographer notebook and a sharpened pencil, she started on the speech she’d been gathering in her head.

How humans were put on this earth to reach their potential, but how could her girls reach their potential unless they knew what to reach for.

Women without plans faltered; women with plans went places.

Louisa crossed her long, slender legs. “Mom, can’t we just play Scrabble or something?”

The house was a mess; a stack of fresh laundry was folded on the coffee table, breakfast dishes and juice glasses from the morning in the sink.

“Would you rather clean the house?” Virgie ran her finger along the baseboard of the kitchen, holding it up to show them the dust. “There’s plenty else to do, if you’d rather. ”

“Nope, not me.” Aggie threaded her hair up into a high ponytail, readying for the challenge. “I have lots of potential I’d rather discuss.”

“Good. Let’s jot down our goals. Remember, life goals can be anything.” Here she emphasized her next words, a bit of sarcasm in her voice: “Goal one. Be kinder to my sisters. Goal two. Give my mother a break sometimes.”

“Keep killing the mood, Mom.” Louisa straightened her arms overhead, yawning.

Had the kitchen always needed a paint job? There were cracks in the wall, narrow hairlines where the plaster had settled under the weight of the house. “You need this the most,” Virgie gently scolded Louisa. “Start jotting.”

Louisa drew spirals in the notebook. “I’m thinking!”

This was an exercise that had come out of the essay she would write her girls, the one she planned to give to Wiley for consideration.

She’d penned the beginning. Just because my firstborn was a girl didn’t mean I didn’t have dreams for her.

While a boy can come into this world and his mother can cradle him, believing he can be anything he wants, mothers of daughters begin the journey with more trepidation.

Because at some point, our daughter may ask us to do something, and we’ll have to break her heart by saying, “No. Girls can’t do that.

” As my eldest daughter approaches the ripe age of sixteen this year, a time when she wants to hear nothing from me, I find myself wanting to tell her everything.

The ideas came quickly then, like they’d been welled up inside her and only now did they have a reason to come out.

Don’t believe the classified ad pages. Just because a job is listed on the men’s side of the ad pages doesn’t mean you can’t apply for it. Women can do any job listed, even welding and plumbing. You only must ask a man to train you.

You will be measured by a different yardstick. A professor in college told me once that unless I was going to do 110 percent of the work of a political science major, I should major in home economics. He’s right. Don’t let them believe you won’t work harder than the smartest boy.

Education first. Always. If a man loves you, he will wait for you to finish.

If a boyfriend is awful to you or someone mistreats you at work, the police may not protect you, but your mother will. Know that you can always go home.

Fight for what you believe in, even when everyone around you doesn’t agree with what you’re saying.

There was so much more she wanted to say but she lowered her pencil when she saw Louisa get up to pour herself orange juice.

“Okay, I’m ready, Mom.” Louisa had been the least excited to go up in the plane, but when she’d descended, she’d run into Virgie’s arms with the corners of her eyes glistening.

“I will never say that an airplane doesn’t have a spirit,” Louisa had said, trading her cool teenage remove for an open heart. Virgie didn’t let go of her daughter’s embrace until Louisa did.

“I’ve been so upset,” her daughter had said, standing in her white knee socks and sneakers in the airfield, her expression pleading with her mother to understand.

“I’ve been so disappointed and ashamed about everything with Brandon, having to visit the clinic and getting rid of, you know.

But I’m more than Brandon Millerton. Someday I will be someone else entirely, and I don’t care if he thinks I’m disgusting or not. ”

“You’re not disgusting. You’re human, and he took advantage of you, coming on that strong.

” If Virgie could erase the Brandon Millerton situation entirely from her daughter’s memory, she would.

She hated that Louisa would carry everything about that procedure for the rest of her life: the smell of the sterile office, the whir of the suction, how she’d curled into a ball in her bed when they got home and refused to leave for a week, eating only chicken and rice soup.

Angling the yellow pad off the kitchen table, Virgie read Louisa’s words, hoping to glimpse the ambition of Athena, the determination of Demeter, in her teen daughter.

“?‘One: become a wife. Two: have a baby. Three: speak my truth.’?”

Virgie lowered the notepad, sagging against the table.

“I’m intrigued by number three, ‘speak my truth.’ It’s something your generation will do better than mine.

” She crossed out Louisa’s first two answers with big black Xs.

“You just flew an airplane, like gosh-darn Amelia Earhart, and all you can think about is being a proper wife?”

Louisa tipped her chin with pride. “What is wrong with that? You’re a wife and mother.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

Louisa squinted at her. “Are we so terrible?”

Virgie frowned. “No, that is why I’m doing this. You’re everything to me.”