“What do you mean?”

“He was different after that, your father.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. More thoughtful maybe. More mature. I thought it was just because he faced his fears. But maybe there was more to it than that. A few weeks ago, Grandpa told me that he always knew your dad would run off—that he was meant to be a nomad. I never quite bought that. But I think that started, that feeling that your dad was meant to wander, after he visited the Bat Lady’s house.”

Chapter 6

SLEEP DIDN’T COME easily that night.

I thought about Bat Lady. I thought about Ashley. But mostly I thought about my mother coming home in the morning. At seven A.M., Myron drove me to the Coddington Rehabilitation Institute. The drive was only about ten minutes, but it felt ten times longer. When we arrived, I jumped out of the car before it even came to a stop. Myron called out to me that he’d wait out here. I waved thanks in mid-sprint.

The security guard nodded and called me by name as I flew by him. Everyone here knows me. I visit my mother every day, except when their protocol doesn’t allow it.

Christine Shippee owned the place, but she also liked to work the front desk. Her facial expression was permanently set on grumpy, peering intensely at everyone through a Plexiglas window. I nodded at her and rushed through a lobby that reminded me of a fancy hotel. I stopped at the entrance so she could buzz me right in. She didn’t. I walked over to where she sat.

She studied me for a moment. “Good morning, Mickey.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Shippee.”

“Big day,” Christine said.

“Yep.”

“I’ve warned you all about the pitfalls.”

“You have.”

“And I’ve told you how the chances of relapse are somewhat high.”

“Several times.”

“Super.” Christine Shippee looked at me over her reading glasses. “Then there’s no need to repeat myself.”

“None.”

She gestured with her head toward the door. “Go. Your mother is waiting.”

I tried not to break into a sprint again, instead doing a little gallop down the corridor. When I entered her room and saw my mother, I broke into a smile. She looked great. For the past six weeks, she had been locked up in this place, detoxing, doing both group and individual therapy, taking pensive walks, exercising, eating right.

The day before Myron brought her here, my mother had gone out late to a seedy bar to get a fix. I used my fake ID—yes, I have a very good one—to get into the bar. I found her with a skuzzy guy, both half passed out, looking like something a cat had spit up.

Now the poison was out of her system. She looked like, well, my mom again.

Kitty—she wanted me to call her that for some reason, but I never did—hugged me and then she took my face in her hands. “I love you so much,” she said.

“I love you too.”

She winked and gestured to the door. “Let’s get out of here before they change their minds.”

“Good idea.”

My mom was Kitty Hammer, and as I implied before, if that name rings a bell, you’re probably a big-time tennis fan. When she was sixteen, Kitty Hammer was the number-one-ranked junior tennis player in the country. Mom was on track to be the next Venus or Billie Jean or Steffi, except something derailed her career for good:

She got pregnant with yours truly.

The world wasn’t ready for my parents’ relationship, I guess, so they ran off to parts unknown. Everyone predicted that the marriage would not last. Everyone was wrong. My mom and dad lived the corniest of love stories, and as I got older, it embarrassed me to no end. It was the kind of love that makes people jealous—and makes them cringe.

I used to want that kind of love for myself one day. Who doesn’t, right? But I don’t anymore. The problem with an all-consuming love like theirs is what happens when you lose it. Love like theirs turns two into one—so when my dad died, it was like ripping one entity in half, destroying my mom too. When we buried my father, I watched her crumble, like a puppet with its strings cut, and there was nothing I could do.

I learned a lesson from all this: that kind of obsessive storybook love was not for me. The end price was simply too high. While I liked Ashley a lot—while I cared about her and enjoyed my time with her—I would never let her or any girl get too close. Maybe she sensed that. Maybe that was why she ran away and never told me. Maybe that was why I should stop looking for her.

Uncle Myron was waiting for us next to his car. I tensed up as we approached. To say that the relationship between my mother and Myron was strained would be a gross understatement. They pretty much hated each other. It was Myron, six weeks ago, who had threatened to take me away from her if she didn’t agree to intensive rehabilitation.

I was surprised then when she walked up to him and gently kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

He nodded, said nothing.

My mother has always been frighteningly honest with me. She was barely seventeen when she got pregnant with me, my dad nineteen. Myron thought that she had trapped my father. Myron called her names, even telling my dad that the baby—me—probably wasn’t even his. It culminated in a fight between the two brothers that ripped them apart in a way that meant they would never be brought back together.

I know all this because my mother told me. She never forgave Myron for what he said about her. But here Mom was, fresh out of rehab, letting go of the past, surprising him, surprising me, and maybe that was the best sign of all.

As promised, Uncle Myron just dropped us off and left. “I’ll be at the office if you need anything,” he said. “The spare car is in the garage if you need one.”

“Thank you,” Mom said. “Thank you for everything.”

Myron had converted the ground-level office into a bedroom for my mother. I would be in the basement below while Myron had the master bedroom upstairs. Most nights, before I came into his life, Myron stayed in a famous apartment building in Manhattan. My hope was, now that my mother was home, he’d go back to that routine and give us some privacy until we could get on our feet and find a place of our own.

Mom practically skipped into her room. When she saw the clothes laid out on the bed, she turned to me with a smile and said, “What’s this?”

“I just bought you a few things.”

It was nothing much. Some jeans and tops from a discount department store. Just enough to get her started. She came over and hugged me. “You know something?” she said to me.