“What you’ve done here is very sweet, Lexie,” she says. “But I can’t go to Massachusetts with you. You need to live this next part of your life on your own. You deserve that. You deserve to live in the dorms so you can make all of the lifelong friends you’re going to make in the dorms. You need to eat at the cafeteria and stay up all night cramming for finals and go to parties and have fun, without having to worry about anyone else. You need your own life.”

“Yes, I need my own life. But so do you,” I argue. It’s been kicking around in my brain ever since Sadie asked me if I was bringing my mom to college. At first I was like, no way, who does that? But then I started to see the logic in the idea. The simple beauty of it. If Mom came to MIT with me, it wouldn’t be the way I pictured it, with the late-night discussions in the dorm and strolling down the sidewalks with a group of friends. But it could be better. Because then Mom wouldn’t be alone, and we could escape Nebraska and what happened in our garage. We would never have to go back. We could start fresh. Both of us.

“My life is over,” Mom says again.

I exhale a frustrated breath. “Just think about it for a while, okay? It’s a good plan. If you think about it—”

She sits up straighter. “No. My answer is no, honey. It’s always going to be no. But I love you for the offer.”

“Mom—”

“This discussion is over,” she says in her official mother voice. She pulls out the gold credit card. “I’ll get the check.”

We don’t have much to say to each other for the rest of the night. Or during breakfast the next morning. Or in the car on the way back to Nebraska, which is going to be about an eleven-hour drive. Mom drives for the first forty-eight minutes without saying more than “Looks like good weather today, doesn’t it?” and that’s when I decide I can’t take it anymore.

“Pull over,” I say.

“What?” She glances at me. “Do you have to go to the bathroom? You went before we left.”

“No, just pull over, right here.”

She brings the car to a stop at the side of the interstate. “What’s the matter? Are you feeling sick?”

“Your life is not over. That’s bullshit.”

Her eyes flash. “Alexis. Watch your mouth.”

“It’s bullshit,” I say again for emphasis, and this time I’m able to swear with conviction. Ty would be proud. “You’re forty-four years old. The average life expectancy for a female in the United States is eighty-one. You’re not overweight, and you don’t smoke, and you’re drinking a lot now, but I like to think that it’s a phase and as soon as you stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself you’ll quit doing that, and you work on your feet for most of the day, and you like vegetables, and you go to church, which studies have shown adds about seven-point-five years to a person’s life, and you brush your teeth. If anyone’s going to live to be a hundred, Mom, it’s you. So stop saying your life is over. It’s not even halfway over. And yes, your son died, and that’s awful, and that hurts, but it’s not your fault. And you know what? Everybody dies, and everybody loses people they love—everybody—and that is not an excuse for you to fucking die. I love you, and I need you to be my mother, and I need you to have a life. So get over yourself.”

I take a much-needed breath.

We sit there. The turn signal is still on, blinking. Cars are blasting by us at seventy-five miles an hour. Mom looks straight ahead.

I just said the f word. Twice. To my mother.

I called her out on her drinking. I told her to get over herself.

“Mom, I—”

She holds a hand up.

“All right,” she says, although I don’t know if she means All right, I’ve had enough, now get out of the car and walk, you ingrate or All right, you’re grounded or All right, I’ll stop saying that my life is over.

“Mom?”

She sighs, then pulls the car back onto the highway.

“Would you look in my purse?” she says after we’ve gone about ten miles. “There’s a book in there.”

I forage through her purse until I find a small and yellowed paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.

“This?” I hold it up, surprised.

She nods. “I was supposed to read it in eighth grade. I thought maybe you could read it to me now. To pass the time.”

“Okay.” It’s odd, but at least she’s not yelling at me. I flip to the first page.

“‘When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow,’” I begin.

Mom lets out a slow breath. “Yes. I knew this would be good.”

So I continue reading. For the next seven-and-a-half hours, stopping for pee breaks and lunch and once because Mom feels the urgent need for a Diet Coke, I read. I read about Scout and Boo Radley and Mayella Violet Ewell. I read until my voice is hoarse.

When I’m done, Mom says, “I always wanted Atticus Finch to be my father. I used to imagine it, like I was secretly adopted and Gregory Peck was my biological father.”

“I thought you said you hadn’t read the book.”

“I saw the movie,” she says. “Have you seen it?”

“Yeah. In eighth grade, I think. You’re right, Gregory Peck is, like, golden. So all this time I was reading, you knew how the story was going to end.”