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but my voice is basically a croak.
    My mother’s long braid swings down over her right shoulder. “Maybe we should take you to a doctor.”
    “I’m fine,” I say. “I just want to sleep.”
    “Lily.” She clenches and unclenches her jaw. “I didn’t move us all the way across the country for you to be afraid of some”—she’s searching for the word—“boy.”
    I roll over and close my eyes. “I’m not afraid of him. I’m afraid of me.”
    “What are you afraid of?” she says.
    How can I tell her? Mom, who’s done everything in the universe for me, who’s moved us twice, who got herself a job in NewHampshire just so we could start over again? “I’m just afraid—” I say. “It’s not enough to make me happy.”
    She thinks this over. “Some people,” she says gently, “have to fight for that harder than others.”
    I think she is talking about me, but after a second I realize Mom is describing herself. She hasn’t really dated anyone since we left Seattle seven years ago. She doesn’t have friends she goes out for coffee or wine with. I feel bad for her sitting behind a desk at the forest headquarters in Campton, while all the teams that answer to her get to go out into the wild. I think Mom’s the kind of person who gets lonelier in an office with other people than when she’s on the Appalachian Trail by herself.
    She stands, pausing at the bedroom door. “Don’t forget your tea,” Mom says, as her cellphone rings. She starts walking down the hall.
    It feels like ages since we moved cross-country. Was it really just August when we shouted every time we crossed a state line? Nevada, the Sagebrush State. Utah, the Beehive State. Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois: Cornhusker, Hawkeye, the Land of Lincoln. The cornfields of Indiana, how they went on and on for days. The campus of Oberlin. Niagara Falls.
    We crossed the Connecticut River late that same day. New Hampshire, the Granite State. Granite, I had thought, is unbreakable . I felt myself grow lighter as I read the sign: Welcome to New Hampshire: Live free or die !
    Like it’s that easy.
----
    —
    MIDAFTERNOON. ANOTHER KNOCK. Mom, with a thermometer and more tea: Lapsang souchong this time—the first black tea in history.
    I pull the thermometer out of my mouth. “Mom,” I say. “I need to tell you something.”
    There’s a dramatic pause and then Boris waddles into the room. He walks over to my bed, spins around three times, then collapses on the floor with a groan.
    “It’s Dad. He’s here . In Adams.” I get this far and then I can’t tell her any more.
    “I know. I talked to him this morning.”
    “I don’t want him here!” I burst out.
    “Don’t worry. He flew back to Seattle yesterday.”
    I heave a sigh of relief. Only now do I realize how much I’ve been dreading him suddenly showing up at the house. Maybe that’s what’s been making me sick—the fear of Dad swooping in to wreck everything again.
    Mom inserts the thermometer into my mouth again. “He told me Asher was the one who contacted him, and invited him out here. I don’t know what that boy was thinking.”
    “That was the big Christmas gift. A reunion .” I speak around the thermometer.
    “Lily, can you just not talk for one minute?” She looks pointedly at my lips, which I clamp around the thermometer.
    She is quiet for a long beat. Finally she says, “We don’t know anyone as well as we think we do. Especially the people we love.”
    Finally the thermometer beeps. “So am I supposed to forgive him?” I ask, as she squints to read my temperature.
    Mom says, “A hundred point eight. I’m calling the doctor.” She stands up.
    My phone pings and I know who it is even without looking. This will be the latest in the series of texts I’ve been getting from Asher begging me to talk to him.
    “Should I text him back?” I ask Mom. I haven’t responded to him once. I’ve barely written to Maya.
    “Why don’t you wait till you feel better,” Mom