Her voice sounded strange. Husky and thick, as though she had been crying. I was instantly on edge.

“Is everything all right?” I asked, thinking something must have happened to my dad. That could be the only reason for her calling me again so soon.

“Yes, everything is fine,” she said, her voice muffled. Then there was silence. Was I supposed to fill in the gap?

I had forgotten how to have a normal conversation with my mother years ago, so I was completely at a loss.

“Is there a reason you’re calling?” I finally asked, going for blunt instead of beating around the bush.

I waited for my mother to chastise me. To tell me that I was being rude and should watch myself. She did neither.

What was going on?

“Your dad and I were going through Jayme’s room this week. Finally cleaning out her clothes and donating them to Goodwill. I . . . I almost couldn’t do it.”

I frowned. Why was she calling to tell me this? She sounded weak and tired and nothing like the aggressive, antagonistic woman she had become since my younger sister’s death.

I was equally surprised that she and my dad were disturbing the shrine they had built to Jayme. Her room had been left virtually untouched since she had last been in it, over three years before. The only time I had been home after starting college I had found my mother changing the sheets on Jayme’s bed as though she were still sleeping there.

“She told you everything! You had to know what was going on! How could you not tell me? How could you not do anything to help your baby sister? What sort of person are you?” my mother had screamed at me the night before I had left to go back to Longwood. It had been the last time I had slept under the roof of my childhood. The last time I had been in my parents’ company.

I had become so used to my resentful mother it was easy to forget the other sides to her personality that had all but been obliterated.

“I’m sure that was hard,” I ventured slowly, feeling as though I was walking into a trap.

My mother sniffed loudly on the other end, confirming that she was indeed crying.

“We found some things I thought you might like to have. Some pictures and keepsakes I know Jayme would want you to have.”

I swallowed thickly around the lump that had formed in my throat. “Oh, well, you can mail them—” I began, but my mom cut me off.

“Actually, I was wondering whether you’d come down for a visit. I asked you last time we spoke and you never really answered me. But your dad and I would really like to see you. It’s . . . it’s been too long,” she said in a rush.

The air was sucked out of my lungs. “You want me to come for a visit? Why?” I practically shouted into the phone.

My mother hissed in a breath, and I waited finally to be yelled at.

But instead she remained calm. “I’m your mother. Do I need a reason to see you?”

“Yes. Considering you haven’t bothered in the last three years.” I sounded angry. And I was. I thought I had made peace with my lack of parental relationship. But with my mother dangling the carrot of her company in front of me, a part of me I thought was dead resurfaced. The part that longed for her parents’ affection. The part that had once been loved and adored by her family.

“There’s a lot I think we need to talk about. We can come to you if that would be easier. Your dad and I could get a hotel room. Take you out to dinner—”

“No!” I said loudly. I knew that having them here at Longwood was the last thing I wanted. I couldn’t have them invading the space that had become my escape. From home. From Jayme’s memory. From them.

“Okay, I understand,” my mother said, sounding sad, which was perplexing on so many levels.

I had no defense against this person. This ghost of my childhood that I thought long gone.

I didn’t know what had precipitated this dramatic change, but I was wary and distrustful. I had hardened myself against my family because they had hurt me deeply already. But my heart strained to open up to her. It wanted to. It needed to love her again.

I had spent years avoiding going back to that place. I had worked hard to put it behind me, even if the memories of my sister and the family I had lost still clawed at my insides every day. I had been firm in the belief that I couldn’t go there. Ever again.

But hearing the soft regret in my mother’s voice had me doing something I thought was impossible to do.

It made me miss home.

“But please think about it. I think it would be important. For all of us,” my mother said quietly, the lack of resentment in her tone louder than her words.

“I will,” I promised.

I hung up the phone feeling conflicted.

“Ugh!” I yelled, throwing down my pencil in frustration. Jayme snickered from across the kitchen table, and I threw her a nasty look.

“What’s wrong, Aubrey?” my mom asked from the back door. She had just come in from getting an armload of firewood that Dad had cut up last weekend. It was the end of fall, and the first signs of winter were appearing. North Carolina was experiencing an unseasonable cold snap, catching everyone by surprise. The forecasters were even calling for a few flakes of snow before the week was out.

“I hate algebra! I just can’t get it!” I complained, picking up my pencil again.

I should have listened when people said high school was a lot harder than middle school. But I thought I would be fine. I mean, I was smart. I got straight A’s. What would be the problem?

Algebra with Mr. Foltz was the problem.

“You look really funny when you want to cry,” Jayme teased, though it wasn’t malicious. I stuck my tongue out at my little sister.

“You just wait, Jay. In two years you’ll be exactly where I am, and then I can make fun of you,” I threatened, though there was no real bite to my words. We both knew that when the time came, I’d be helping her with her homework anyway.

Mom opened the refrigerator and pulled out a jug of iced tea she had made earlier, pouring some into glasses and bringing them over to the table. She sat one down in front of me and handed me a chocolate chip cookie.

“Brain food,” she said, smiling and sitting down beside me.

I took the offered snack and ate it, thinking there was nothing better in the world than my mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies.

“Okay, so what’s the problem?” she asked, leaning over my textbook, a concentrated frown on her face.

I pointed to the gobbledygook on the page. “Mr. Foltz told us one way to do it and the book is saying to do another. Neither of them make any sense!” I moaned, burying my head in my crossed arms in a fit of teenage melodrama.

I could hear Jayme giggling again and Mom quietly shushing her. Then her hand was on my back, a calm, comforting touch. I lifted my head and looked at my mother. Even though I was a teenager and quickly outgrowing the idea that my parents were the coolest people on the planet, I still believed that my mother had the answer to everything. I held on to that belief with a strength of conviction I didn’t think I’d ever lose.

My friends had always been so jealous of the relationship I had with my mom. They thought she was the coolest. She’d take me shopping, talk to me about boys, help me apply makeup that looked great. I was lucky.

Mom put her finger underneath my chin and lifted my face. “Sometimes we just need to look at something another way. Things are never so simple that there’s only one answer.”

I smiled. She smiled. Jayme smiled from across the table.

My entire life up to that point was made up of moments like this.