Pious. She lives outside Seattle now, although for nearly ten years we both lived in New York. I’ve missed her ever since she moved away.

“You’re an answer to a prayer, girl,” I admit, crossing the sticky muddy drive to sit on the open tailgate of my dad’s old truck. “I think I’m losing my mind.”

“What’s wrong?”

I push my long hair from my face and discover that my hand is trembling. It’s just stress and fatigue, but I don’t like it. “My mama’s been here a week visiting us, and living with her is like attending a church revival. It’s Jesus this, and Jesus that, and nothing I do is ever right or good enough. Why didn’t I remember this before I moved us all home?”

Marta laughs on the other end of the line. “Moving home always sounds so idyllic until you do it.”

“It did seem idyllic—empty ranch house, no rent, free schools, Pop’s truck—but Mama keeps showing up on the doorstep, and my brothers seem to think I’m still sixteen, not thirty-nine!”

“If it’s any consolation, I was miserable when we first moved back to Seattle, too. Eva was lonely. I despised the wealthy stay-at-home moms. You were the one who gave me the big lecture about how I needed to make more of an effort to fit in—”

“I didn’t!”

“You did. On the ferry coming back from the San Juan Islands.”

My brow clears as I remember our weekend away three years ago. “That wasn’t a lecture, Ta. That was a pep talk.”

“The point is, my first year I was really unhappy in Bellevue. I was missing New York. Missing you. Missing the life I’d left behind.”

“But you had a reason to stick it out in Bellevue. And you didn’t move back because you were running away from anything.” I swing my legs and soak up the autumn sunshine. After the past two days of rain, I’ll take every bit of sun I can get. “I’ve never run away from anything before. Why am I running now?”

“You didn’t run away from New York. You just wanted change. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“But Parkfield? The ranch? I pulled my kids out of the best private boys’ school in the city and dragged them out to the sticks. And they hate it, at least Bo and Hank do. Cooper’s a country kid at heart and loving life here. He and my brother Brick have totally bonded, but my older two… they’re unhappy. They don’t know what to do with pasture, tractors, and cow patties.”

Marta stifles a laugh. “Can’t say I blame them. I’d hate being stuck in the country.”

“I don’t think Bo and Hank are really trying, though.