He looks back to the steering wheel, and quickly wipes at the corner of his eye, which makes my heart feel like it’s shattering.

I shut the door and turn away, listening to his engine receding, unable to watch him disappear.

After a minute, I start to walk. The fairy-tale cottage’s drapes are open, its windows aglow.

Inside, three people amble past. A blazer-wearing woman slightly ahead of a young couple, arm in arm, laughing at something she said.

A Realtor selling a couple on the life they could have there.

The late nights binge-watching The X-Files on the couch they picked out together, the early mornings making toast while they’re still too tired to speak, the kids who will earn their first scars in the backyard and badly practice instruments at inconvenient times, and the way their favorite candle’s scent will gradually infuse the walls so that every time they come back from a trip, exhausted, and dump their bags inside the door, they’ll smell that they’re where they belong.

All those moments throughout the days, weeks, months that don’t get marked on calendars with hand-drawn stars or little stickers.

Those are the moments that make a life.

Not grand gestures, but mundane details that, over time, accumulate until you have a home, instead of a house.

The things that matter.

The things I can’t stop longing for.

There’s only one place that feeling exists for me, only one person with whom I belong.

“Honey?” Mom answers right away. “What’s up?”

“You’re busy,” I say.

“No, no, hold on a second.” The voices fade, then cut out as she closes a door. “What’s up?”

“Mom. You’re clearly in the middle of something,” I say.

“I’m never too busy for you,” she says. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Where to start? “Dad came to visit.”

“Oh, shit,” she says. “That’s what he wanted your address for? I thought he was just mailing you something.”

“Same,” I say. “But no, he was stopping by.” I leave out the with his new wife part. He’s out of her life, and she prefers it that way.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should’ve asked you, but he just wanted to confirm the address. If I’d had any idea—”

“No, Mom, it’s fine,” I say. “I would’ve told you to give it to him.”

She hesitates. “So, how was it?”

“Great,” I admit. “And then terrible.”

“So the usual,” she says.

“Basically.”

“He’s always been great, for a while.” She sighs. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know it sucks.”

“It does.” Tears well in my eyes. “It sucks so much.”

After a pause, she says, “You deserve a better dad. I wish I could give that to you.”

“You did.” I wipe my eyes dry, but my voice is tearier than ever. “You’ve always been my mom and my dad. And my best friend. You’ve always been absolutely everything for me.”

“Oh, baby,” she says softly. “I love you more than everything else on this planet combined. But no one person can be everything we need. Sometimes I couldn’t even really do a good job at being your mother, let alone those other things.”

“You were perfect,” I say. “You were amazing.”

“Amazing, maybe,” she says. “But far from perfect. Do you know how many school recitals I fell asleep during?”

I sniff. “No.”

“However many you had,” she replies.

I chortle. “That’s like drifting off to the tune of forty-five street cats in heat.”

“I wouldn’t know!” she says. “In my dreams, the fifth-grade class sang beautifully.”

I sink onto my rug, face in my hands, quivering with laughter.

“If I could do it again,” she says, after a second, “I wouldn’t have moved you around so much either.”

“You did what you had to,” I say.

“I thought so at the time,” she says. “But the truth is, I think we both could’ve been happier with less. We were, in that first apartment, just the two of us, remember?”

“I do.” Warmth brims in my chest. That place had thin walls and leaky pipes, but Mom made it feel like an adventure we were setting out on. We were the kids camping out in the Met in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, or the titular children from The Boxcar Children living in the titular boxcar.

“I was just so scared I couldn’t really do it on my own,” she goes on. “And so many decisions I made were based on the fear of what could go wrong, instead of my hopes for what might go right. Every time that fear got tripped, I picked you up and moved you away, rather than facing the possibility of discomfort. I never took any chances.”

“You were a realist,” I tell her.

“Honey.” She laughs. “I’m a cynic. And a cynic is a romantic who’s too scared to hope.”

It feels like a nail driven into my sternum.

“Is that what I am?” I ask her.

“You?” she says. “You, my girl, are whoever you decide to be. But I hope you always keep some piece of that girl who sat by the window, hoping for the best. Life’s short enough without us talking ourselves out of hope and trying to dodge every bad feeling. Sometimes you have to push through the discomfort, instead of running.”

I know right then what I need to do. As badly as I want to run, this is my mess, and first I have to face it.