Then came the harder, human ripple. Mom sat across the kitchen table the night after our decision to bid. She had a mug pressed between her hands, the heat making her fingers pink. “I thought about the property,” she said, as if she’d been rehearsing the sentence. “If you take this contract, that’ll change how often we see each other. Daniel and I have been talking about moving for good. He’s been offered the office with more stability, and if we take it, we could—well, we could be three towns away.”
I felt the room tilt like a hand on a scale. It was a strange grief to feel at once relieved and bereft. She was free to choose her life—God, I’d begged for that for so long—but the plan I’d tucked into my chest as anchor would stretch. “If you go,” I said, thinking of practicalities, “we’ll
