“She’s my mother.”
“I know who she is. She’s also not a child, and she’s not unable to manage her own life. She went through something terrible and you’ve been trying to protect her from ever being uncomfortable again, and what that has meant for us is –” I stopped, then started again. “I’m not going on this trip. Please go, and let’s talk when you get back.”
He was very still for a moment.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “That’s also something we should talk about when you get back.”
## The Morning They Left
They left on a Saturday. I didn’t make a point of being elsewhere; I was in the house when Nathan loaded the car. He came and found me in the kitchen, where I was making coffee.
“We’re heading out,” he said.
“Okay.”
He stood there for a moment. He looked tired. Nathan is a handsome man in a specific, quiet way — dark hair going gray at the temples, a way of carrying himself that reads as competent and calm, which he mostly is. Standing in the kitchen doorway that morning he looked like someone in the process of understanding something he hadn’t wanted to understand.
“I’ll call when we get there,” he said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Olivia.”
“I know,” I said.
He left. I heard the car back out of the driveway. I stood at the kitchen window with my coffee and watched the street return to empty, and felt a combination of things that I won’t try to simplify: some relief, some sadness, some of that particular loneliness that comes from being the person who made a hard choice and now has to live in its immediate aftermath without any of the company that might soften it.