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Her voice was quiet and steady. This was something she had thought about for a long time.

Something she had sat with. Inspected. Here I had always thought she ignored things until they were too bad to turn a blind eye to—but that might’ve just been me convincing myself that something more could’ve been done.

That something could be done. That we weren’t helpless here.

But the truth was, we were.

“I know Mitch will be okay. Georgia will make sure he is.” Her fingers were soft and gentle through my hair. “I won’t get to see very much of their future. Or yours. I have to admit, Sasha was quite a surprise, but Ami always said that the things you loved most returned. That they always would.”

“Sasha told me a lot about her.”

“I wanted to talk about her so often when you were younger, but it was hard—it was always so hard. And I just began to think … what right did I have to talk about her, when I’d barely spoken to her before she died?

Our friendship was never the same once she left with Roman—when she said I’d regret staying.

But now … I’m forgetting everything about her and I didn’t tell anyone.

And maybe I should have.” Her fingers were soothing against my scalp.

She always liked to braid my hair when I was little, and I always let her.

And, after a while, I just started to braid it myself because it was just who I was.

“I think a lot about that these days. Things I should tell you all, so at least someone remembers.”

I closed my eyes. For months, I’d thought about the same thing, and the opposite—how to tell her things she once remembered. “What’s it like? In your head?”

“Gray, sometimes,” she replied. “I don’t really notice. I just get frustrated. I know something is wrong, but I just … don’t understand. A few months ago, Mitch asked me if I was scared. He’s scared.”

“Are you?” I asked. These were questions I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask, but I needed to. I needed to know what it felt like for her. I needed to understand. Maybe then the tight, suffocating knot of dread in my middle would feel sated and the storm would not look so scary.

Mom said, “No, heart. I’m not scared. I was , but now I’m just angry. So angry. I’m angry that this is all I get. This little pinch of time. How much is left? How much of it will I spend as me?” She gave a sniff and wiped her nose.

My eyes began to burn with tears. Oh no. I steeled myself, scared that if I moved, the dread in me would crack, and I’d come undone right here in her lap. “Mom …” I whispered.

“And then I wonder when I’m gone, will my life have meant anything at all?

” she went on, as if by voicing her worries she could somehow find an answer to them.

“When you asked if I regretted giving up on music—I lied. It’s easier to give the perfect answers than the messy ones.

Because of course I do, heart. I regret it so much I can’t talk about it—any of it.

I can’t remind myself of the person I used to be, who wanted to be a yelp into the void …

because all I am is a sigh. What did I do in this life that mattered? ”

I could tell her everything she’d done. Everything that mattered. Every small thing that built up to bigger things—

But that wasn’t what she meant.

She wasn’t talking about Mitch or me, or even Dad.

There was a small whisper in my heart, and I knew it was in hers, too, asking what we were made for, wanting answers in the form of art and music and beautiful things.

“Roman always talked about the spotlight like it was home. He just basked in it. If he wasn’t creating, he wasn’t breathing. But when I stood up there”—she nodded to the stage, a far-off look in her eyes—“I never felt so small. I wasn’t full of that star stuff. Not like you, not like Mitch.”

You’re wrong , I wanted to tell her, because neither my brother nor I could’ve been made of star stuff without her. You could’ve shone just as bright.

“And I was scared,” she admitted. “I think that’s what I regret. I regret being scared, because I thought I had time. I always thought I had time.” Her fingers combed through my hair gently, unraveling the knots with patience. “But we never have enough. I’ll never have enough.”

She was quiet for a long moment. The rush of waves washed in toward the shore, and then out again, timeless in a way that we’d never be.

Finally, she said, “How do I forgive my past self for all the futures I didn’t become? I don’t know.”

My mom was supposed to know everything.

I squeezed my eyes closed, but the tears were already there. “It’s not fair.”

“No,” Mom agreed, “it’s not.”

Everyone always said that Mitch was Mom’s and that I was Dad’s, but families—or at least mine—never split down the middle that equally.

Dad and I could just exist in the same room together and never say a word.

We liked the comfortable silence, we trusted it.

It was Mom I went to to fill those silences.

With her, I could pour my heart out; I could tell her anything.

She was my secret keeper, my confidant. She knew before I did that I had a crush on Mark Lowski in fifth grade, and then Esme Madden in eighth.

She knew when I fell for Van Erickson my freshman year of high school.

When I confessed where I’d been with Gigi the night we stole away to the Renegade concert, she never told anyone—not even the teachers, who asked where we’d been.

She was the first person to see my acceptance to Berklee.

The first person I told that I wanted to leave Vienna Shores.

Mom was one of my best friends, and some of my best memories when I was little were when she pulled me up onto her toes and we’d sway to Roman Fell and the Boulevard’s “Wherever,” and we’d sing the song because we knew it from memory.

And when I was older and achy with heartbreak, she’d turn up the stereo in the house and we’d scream to Alanis Morissette and howl to Bruce Springsteen, because she knew better than anyone how well a song could heal a broken heart.

Maybe not immediately, but eventually, like slowly drying cement.

Records were always better, she used to tell me.

“You can feel the grit in them. They make the music sound alive.”

And now whenever I heard the crackle of a record player, I thought of her, imagining the music breathing in and out, raspy and ancient and eternal.

It wasn’t fair. I wanted to cry over terrible men to her, and I wanted her to tell me I deserved better.

I wanted to listen to Jimmy Buffett with her, and I wanted to talk about Roman Fell’s final world tour coming up, and I wanted her to tell me, for the thousandth time, how the moment she met Dad, she wanted him to be hers forever.

But I knew that, someday beyond this last good summer, I’d come back from LA to visit her, and my mom would be gone, replaced by a blurry reflection of herself, like a mirror slowly fogging over.

What if I couldn’t take it, because she was right there , and also a thousand miles away in a place I couldn’t go?

And then there was this small part of my heart that whispered for me to stay. To leave LA to the shiny people like Sasha and Willa.

I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to think about the ending of this summer, and how the minutes slipped by like sand through our fingers.

“I wish I could write a song that you can never forget,” I whispered.

“One that will make you remember. What’s the point of any of this if you’re not here? ”

Mom stroked my hair softly, reassuringly. “You’re wrong, heart. I’ll be here. I’ll be here in every song, I promise.”

Hot tears brimmed in the corners of my eyes and fell down my cheeks. I held my breath, and tensed my torso, as I tried to hold the tears in. I was afraid that I’d never be able to put myself back together if I let go.

“You’ll be fine, heart. It’s okay,” Mom whispered to me, because I think she could hear me crying. “You should cry as much as you want. It’s not a bad thing. It never is. Grief is just a love song in reverse.”

That terrible, horrible knot in my chest tightened and twisted, making it hard to gulp for breath between my tears, and just when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore, the knotted sadness began to loosen. As Mom pulled her fingers through my hair, the strings began to come undone.

And so did I.

I sat there on the hard concrete in front of the storm with my head in my mom’s lap, like I used to when I was little, while I cried, and cried, and cried, until there was nothing left in me, and we simply sat in silence as her fingers wove small braids into my hair.

After a while, Mom whispered that we should probably try to sleep since the worst of the storm had passed, so I picked myself up and returned to the foyer, where Sasha slept curled against a blanket, and I sank down beside him again and pressed my face into his chest. And for the first time in so long, the emptiness inside of me no longer felt so large, so looming, as if I’d cried all of it out.

Sasha wrapped his arms around me and drew me into him.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” I whispered.

“Is everything okay?”

“No,” I replied truthfully, closing my eyes, “but it will be, someday.”