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least three miles!”
    She doesn’t answer, just turns the corner onto the main road, leaving me to scamper into the Explorer and chase after her. I pull up next to her, rolling down the window, trying to appease her.
    “Darcy, get in. I didn’t mean it like you think I did.”
    “Yes, you did,” she answers. “You think we should just all move on and get over it, and I’m sorry, but I think you suck.” Her voice is weighted dead.
    “Darce,
please
. Let’s not do this today.”
    “Too late,” she says, stubborn to the end. “Honestly, get out of my face. You ruined this for me.”
    “I
ruined
this for you? God, could you be any more melodramatic?” The car is rolling slowly along now, and I check the rearview mirror to be sure that no one is nosing up behind me.“Grow up, Darcy. Just freaking
grow up
. We all have lives to live, futures to look forward to. That takes nothing away from Mom!”
    “Yeah, well, good luck to you then.” She spins on her heels and darts into the parking lot of the Exxon station by the side of the road. I call after her—“Darcy, get back here! We are not finished!”—but she tucks herself into a phone booth, fishes a quarter from her pocket, and punches a number into the phone.
    “Darcy!” I try one last time, but my voice just reverberates in the car. And even if she could hear me, she wouldn’t listen anyway. So I shake my head, gun the gas, and fly down the road. Darcy will find her way back home with or without me. She always does.

three
    T yler is deep into slumber when I crack open the den door. He’s fallen asleep with the game still on—he’s been doing this nearly every night these days: collapsing here on the couch, too lazy to haul himself upstairs.
    “Ty.” I try to shake him awake. “Ty, get up for a sec.”
    He grunts and his eyelashes flutter, but he is too far gone to rouse now. So I unfold a blanket from the hall closet and carry it over to him, wrapping him like a newborn. I flick off the TV and then the light, but the room doesn’t quite fall black. Tyler’s breath is patterned, measured now, and I stare at my husband, the one boy whom I’ve loved for just about forever, and I marvel at how he is mine. His brown-black hair still thick on his head; his tanned cheeks that never fade, even in the coldest of months; his broad, defined torso still as agile as it was when he was the star shortstop. He will make such a capable father, this I know; his bear-paw hands will swallow up his child with his love. I want to wake him to bitch about my irritation with Darcy—how she always makes it about herself, how she refuses to cut any of us any slack—and also to beckon him to come even out the weight on our mattress, tether me like a buoy.
    I move to kiss him good night, that last flicker of a moment of our evening together, when I’m seized with a cramp in my foot. It shoots through me like a lit wick, before I can even think to grab on to something steady, exploding through my temples, and then,
blam
, it’s gone. Stars splay themselves on the back of my eyelids, and my gag reflex kicks in as I choke back suffocating air.
    “You okay?”
    I look down to see Tyler peering up at me, his eyes half-open from the disturbance.
    I exhale through my mouth. “I’m fine. Just upset over a fight with Darcy.”
    “What happened?” He sighs, his words slow with sleep.
    I start to reply, but the open window has shut: he’s already gone, slipping back in his dream world, slipping out of consciousness entirely.
    I pop three Aleve, yank my dress over my head, and fall into bed. The air conditioner whirls and hums as I try to temper my anger with Darcy and her ever-present immaturity. This begrudging, this I’m-so-stinking-pissed feeling is foreign, unfamiliar, and I want to let it go, but it’s stuck there, taffy in my bloodstream, emotional static cling. I consider calling Susie but know she has her own burdens to bear, and Luanne is working the night