“She’d be thrilled with what you’ve done.”

“She didn’t live to see me published, not with a book. She wanted me to go to college. I wanted it, too, but I figured on putting it off a year or two, earning more money first. She laid down the law—and she was damn good at that when it was important to her. So I went.”

He was silent for a moment, and a cloud slipped over the sun, deadening the light. “I sent some money home, but not much. Wasn’t that much to spare. I didn’t come home as much as I should have. I got caught up. There was so much out there. Then I went to grad school. There were a lot of years I wasn’t there for her.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself.”

“Am I? She put me first, every time. I could’ve come back here sooner, earned a good living at the garage and taken some of the weight off her.”

She put a hand on his shoulder so he would turn and face her. “That’s not what she wanted for you. You know it wasn’t. She was over the moon about what you were doing. When you had those stories published in magazines, she was thrilled.”

“I could’ve written them here. I did write when I finally came home. I got my teeth into a book, wrote like a crazy man at night after work. When I wasn’t being crazy over you, that is. I was going to do it all, have it all. Money, fame, the works.”

He spoke quickly now, as if the words had been dammed up too long. “I was going to move her out of that broken-down house, buy her someplace beautiful, up in the hills. She would never have to work again. She could garden or read, or whatever she wanted to do. I was going to take care of her. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

“Oh, Jordan. You’re not to blame for that.”

“It’s not a matter of blame. She got sick. I’d spent all that time away, now I was back, going to make it right. And she got sick. Just a little tired, she’d say. Just a little achy. Getting old. And she’d laugh. So she didn’t go to the doctor in time. Money was tight, time off work was tough to get, so she didn’t go until it was too late.”

Unable to hold out against it, she took his hand in hers. “It was terrible. What both of you went through was terrible.”

“I didn’t pay attention, Dana. I was wrapped up in my own life, in what I wanted, what I needed. I didn’t see that she was sick until she . . . Jesus, she sat me down and told me what they’d found inside her.”

“It’s stupid to blame yourself for that. Stupid, Jordan, and she’d tell you exactly that.”

“She probably would, and I’ve come around to that since. But during it, after . . . It happened so fast. I know it took months, but it seemed so fast. The doctors, the hospital, the surgery, the chemo. Christ, she was so sick through that. I didn’t know how to take care of her—”

“Wait. Just wait. You did take care of her. You stayed with her, you read to her. God, Jordan, you fed her when she couldn’t feed herself. You were her rock then, Jordan. I saw it.”

“Dana, I was terrified, and I was angry, and I couldn’t tell her. I locked it in because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You were barely in your twenties, and your world was crashing down around you.”

Even as she said it, she knew she hadn’t understood that at the time, not completely.

“She was fading away in front of me, and I couldn’t stop it. When we knew she was dying, when there wasn’t much time—she was in such pain—she told me she was sorry she had to go, that she had to leave me. She said there wasn’t a single day of my life she hadn’t been proud of me, and grateful for me.

“I fell apart. I just lost it. Then she was gone. I don’t know if I said good-bye, or told her I loved her. I don’t even know what I said or did.”

He turned back, walking once more toward the stones that bloomed out of the patchy grass. “She’d made all the arrangements already, so all I had to do was follow through. One foot in front of the other. The memorial service—the dress she wanted to wear, the music she wanted played. She had some insurance. She’d scraped money together for that every month. Christ knows how. There was enough to pay off most of the debts that had built up and give me some breathing room.”

“You were her child. She wanted to provide for you.”

“She did, in every possible way. I couldn’t stay here, Dana. Not then. I couldn’t live in that house and grieve for her every time I took a breath. I couldn’t stay in this town, where I would see people I knew everywhere I went.

“You’d think it would be a comfort, the familiar. But for me it was constant pain. One minute I’d feel like I was suffocating, the next like I was going to explode. I had to get away from it. I had to bury some of that pain the way I’d buried her.”

“You wouldn’t talk to me about it.”

“I couldn’t. If I’d had the words, I’d have choked on them. I’m not saying it was right. It wasn’t. But it’s the truth. I had to make something of myself, and I couldn’t do it here. Or I believed I couldn’t, so what’s the difference?”

“You had to go,” she murmured, “or you wouldn’t be who you are.” How could it have taken her so long to see that?

“I hated what I was here, and I was afraid of what I would become if I stayed. I saw myself working in the garage day after day, year after year, and throwing away everything she’d worked for, everything she’d wanted for me because I couldn’t do any better. I was angry and in pain, so wrapped up in both I didn’t give a damn about anything else.”

He came back to the edge of his mother’s grave, stared down at the flowers. “I didn’t know you loved me. I don’t know what I’d have done differently if I had, but I didn’t know. You always seemed so strong, so sure of yourself, so easy with the way things were, that I didn’t see inside that.”

He reached out to brush the hair back from her cheek, then dropped his hand again. “Maybe I didn’t want to. With all that happened to her, I didn’t have any room to love anyone. But I hurt you, and I meant to. Because it was easier on me if you walked away. I’m ashamed of that, and I’m sorry for it. You deserved better.”

“I don’t know what to say to you. It helps, hearing all this. I know it wasn’t easy to tell me.”