Page 34 of The Best Worst Thing

Homeward Bound

Nicole spent the first half of her flight leaning against the window, wiping quiet tears from her tired eyes.

And then, somewhere over the Continental Divide, when the world outside had turned a cold and blank sapphire and the rest of the whirring plane had fallen fast asleep, Nicole pulled out her phone and did what she did best. She made a list. She made a plan.

She needed to call Mari’s attorney. She needed to ask Mari to sage her bedroom.

She needed, on that note, a new smoke detector.

She needed to learn CPR, and how to bolt furniture to the wall, and whether early exposure to peanut butter was recommended or frowned upon this year.

She needed to research bottle feeding and determine whether Valerie’s offer to pump and ship breast milk was more stress for everyone than it was worth.

She needed to think about money, and the house, and how long she could possibly expect Gabe to let her live in it, and whether she could still be a stay-at-home mom, and whether she’d ever really wanted that, or if it’d just been something she convinced herself of because having a baby seemed so impossible, she thought she’d only be rewarded if she made motherhood—and the pursuit of it—her whole world.

She needed to put one foot in front of the other. She needed to do the next right thing, over and over, until the day that baby came. And she needed—more than she could’ve possibly imagined, even just twenty-four hours ago—to get back to California.

To get back home.