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  And that was all. I watched him walk down the sidewalk to his own house. He didn’t look back. Not once.

  Chapter 12

  So it wasn’t a marriage proposal. I still went to bed with my head and heart buzzing. I slept hard, no dreams, and woke refreshed. No strange smells, nothing shifting around. I felt better than I had in weeks, the difference subtle and unnoticeable if I hadn’t been so focused on every small twinge of my body.

  After work I found the dress my mom wanted and decided on a whim to drive it down to her. Harrisburg was only a forty-minute drive to Annville and it wasn’t like I had anything better to do. Or worse. And…I wanted to see my mom. With everything that had been happening, I needed to sit at the old kitchen table, drink some chocolate milk. Be babied, just a little.

  But when I got there, the house was dark and quiet. No car in the drive. I let myself in the front door, feeling like a guest even though I used my own key. “Hello?”

  No answer. I checked my watch. It was just after 7:00 p.m, by no means late at night, but for my parents it was the equivalent of one in the morning. I put my keys in my bag and set it on the chair just inside the front door out of habit, though my mom had always yelled at me to put my stuff away. I had no place to put it now.

  I didn’t live there anymore.

  “Mom? Dad?” I hung the black dress, still covered in plastic from the last time I’d had it dry-cleaned, on the coatrack. “Hello?”

  The crunch of car tires alerted me to someone pulling into the drive, and the next minute the electric garage door opener rattled the decorative plates hung on the dining room wall. I stepped through into the kitchen just as my mom came through the door from the garage.

  She screamed. Loud. I screamed, too.

  “Emmaline!”

  “Mom!” I started laughing. “Didn’t you see my car out front?”

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” my mom said, a hand over her heart. She was puffing. “You scared the breath out of me!”

  “Sorry.” Chagrined, I moved forward to hug her as my dad came through the door. “Hi, Dad.”

  My dad greeted me with an absentminded kiss and a hug. He pushed past us and down the hallway toward their bedroom as though my visit were nothing special. God, I love my dad.

  My mom held me at arm’s length and looked me up and down. “You look thinner.”

  “I wish. But you definitely do.” I’d seen her only a month or so ago, but she’d lost weight. She wore a tracksuit and had dropped a gym bag at her feet when she screamed. “Were you at the gym?”

  My mom looked at the bag, then her clothes, then at me. “Yes. Your dad and I figured we’d better get in shape.”

  My mom had never been fat. Just pleasantly rounded, thick in the thighs and full in the chest. It was strange to see her cheeks more hollowed. I’d brought the dress thinking there was little chance she’d fit in it, but now it looked as though it might actually be too big.

  “Wow,” I said. “I should take a page from your book.”

  It was her pet phrase, and I sounded just like her. My mom laughed and hugged me tight. I closed my eyes and hugged her back just as hard.

  “Oh, my baby girl. I’ve missed you.”

  “Mom,” I said out of habit, not because I really minded.

  “What are you doing here?” she said when we pulled apart.

  “I brought the dress.”

  “Oh, right. Good!” My mom beamed. “Let me just take a quick shower and I’ll try it on. Have you eaten yet? I’m going to throw together a salad for Dad and me, but there’s some leftovers in the fridge.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  I did pull open the fridge to get some milk, but when I opened the cupboard to look for the chocolate milk mix, it wasn’t there. And the table itself, I realized when I looked it over, was new. The same shape and size as the other one, but definitely different. I put the milk back and sat down heavily in a chair that was different, too.

  “So, what do you think?” My mom came into the kitchen almost shyly, wearing the dress. It fit her perfectly, only a little baggy in the chest. She twirled slowly.

  “It looks great.”

  “You think so?” She tugged at the neckline, which was way lower than anything she usually wore. “It’s not too revealing?”

  “No. Not at all. With your hair up and a pretty necklace, it will be great. You’ll need different shoes.” I pointed to her thick ankle socks, and we both smiled.

  “Good. Well, that’s taken care of, then.” She smoothed the dress over her belly and turned from side to side to catch her reflection in the mirror hung on the back of the basement door. “Saves me having to buy one.”

  “What are you wearing it for?” I thought she’d say a wedding or something.

  “Oh…” My mom chewed her lower lip for a second before looking at me with shining eyes. “Your dad’s taking me on a cruise for our anniversary.”

  “What?” My jaw dropped.

  “Yep. And there’s a formal dinner night. This will be perfect.”

  Could. Not. Process. “A cruise. You and Dad?”

  “Yes,” she said. “An Alaskan cruise!”

  Not even to the Caribbean, which was at least closer. “Wow. That’s great, Mom.”

  “We haven’t taken a trip together, just the two of us…well…probably not since our honeymoon.”

  Because of me. She’d never say it, and I knew lots of parents who’d never taken a vacation without their kids when the children were small, but my parents had stuck close to home for long years after their friends had all started hopping off on weekend getaways. And cruises.

  Suddenly I was choked up, on the verge of tears I didn’t want my mom to see. “Sounds like fun. When do you leave?”

  “Oh, not until March. That’s why we joined the gym. Marianne Jarvis, you remember her, right? Well, she said that cruises stuff you so full you come back ten pounds heavier. I thought we should get rid of at least ten before going.” My mom smoothed the front of the dress again.

  “I’m sure you’ll have a great time. And you look great, too.”

  She studied me then. “Emm? Are you okay?”

  No chocolate milk. A new table. My mother in a black cocktail dress, looking younger and prettier than I could ever remember. These were the changes that had happened since I’d moved out, and I didn’t want to ruin her excitement with my own fears.

  “You always ask me that. And what do I always say?”

  “You always say you’re fine,” my mom answered.

  “So, I’m fine.”

  “Okay, let me go get changed out of this. Are you staying for long? I can heat up something for you.”

  “I have some things to get out of the basement, if that’s okay.”

  She gave me a funny look. “Of course it’s okay, honey, this is still your house. It will always be your house.”

  I made it to the basement before bursting into tears I stifled with my fist. The battered love seat I’d left behind was still there and I sank onto it with both hands clapped over my mouth to keep even the tiniest sound from escaping. I rocked, weeping for reasons I couldn’t really understand. I’d wanted to be independent. So why did I feel abandoned instead?

  I forced myself to stop before I disintegrated entirely. The breakdown was mawkish and self-serving, not to mention selfish. And stupid. It was also dishonest, because I knew very well if I’d told Mom flat out that I’d been having fugues again she’d have hog-tied me to a kitchen chair and refused to let me leave until I made a doctor’s appointment, and maybe not even then.

  I wanted to tell her so she could pet and pamper me. I didn’t want to tell her because I knew she would. I couldn’t really have it both ways; that was my burden to deal with, not hers. I was almost thirty-two years old, and it was time to stand up on my own.

  I hadn’t left a whole lot behind, but there were a few plastic bins full of miscellaneous crap in the crawl space. Old yearbooks and photo albums, some treasure