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to help you with that.” I felt a sudden yearning for all the times I’d sat on Christopher’s bed, repeating spelling words and review questions for tests. Jake had always been an independent student, but Christopher required extra attention.
    He hiked his backpack higher on his shoulder. “I got it. It’s just hard finding someone who can explain it so it makes sense.”
    A flash of thought moved between us so quickly neither of us could stop it, so clearly it might as well have been spoken out loud. If Jake were here, he could help.
    The unspoken reality made us step apart and look away.
    “I’m gonna go on up to bed. I’ll hit the alarm,” Christopher said, and I nodded, then swallowed the emotions in my throat.
    “All right, sweetheart. Love you.”
    “Love you too, Mom.”
    I turned off the TV, then followed Christopher upstairs and took a sleep aid I’d gotten from the health food store, even though using it made me feel like a failure. Growing up in a house with my mother would have made anyone leery of both pills and alcohol. The herbal stuff seemed harmless enough, though, and it put me to sleep. Most nights I dreamed of Jake. He was always standing in the upstairs hall, near his bedroom door. I’d move slowly toward him, saying, “You’re home. You’re safe. Thank God.”
    In the dream, he nodded, his dark hair falling over the twinkling brown eyes I’d loved since the moment a Guatemalan nun had led him into a little room, stood him in front of us, and introduced us as su nueva madre y el padre. It was hard to tell if Jake understood or not, but he looked up at the nun and nodded, his face very serious, very wise for a three-year-old. She put his hand in mine and he stood very still. Later, he would tell me that he thought I was going to take him to the mother he remembered. When we went to the airport and got on the plane, he thought she must be a long way away, maybe living in the sky in heaven, and that was where we were going.
    I fell asleep thinking of Jake and wondering where he was now, and why, six months after he’d abandoned his car at the airport and bought a ticket to Guatemala, he still hadn’t called home. I prayed halfheartedly as I drifted off that tonight would be the night the phone would ring and wake me up, and it would be him. But after six months of silence, I knew better than to set expectations. A prayer that went unanswered yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that doesn’t find much hope today, either.
    In the morning, when I awoke, for just an instant I thought Jake was down the hall in his room, and then I came to reality. I considered staying in bed. Sure, be just like Mother, a voice whispered inside me. Lie here and medicate yourself until you don’t know what day it is. As always, just the thought was enough to pull me upright, out of bed, and into the bathroom to get dressed. All of my life, there had been the underlying fear that one step down the slippery slope of substance abuse could land me in the pit of dependency and denial that had swallowed almost every member of my family. When I was growing up, Uncle Poppy and Aunt Ruth were the only normal relatives I knew. They were the reason I understood that what my family silently deemed as acceptable wasn’t acceptable at all.
    Downstairs, there was no sign that Rob had come and gone, and Christopher had left early again.
    I contemplated the day as, across the street, Holly and her twins climbed into the van and headed off to school. So far, neither of the twins had shown any interest in getting drivers’ licenses, and Holly wasn’t pushing it. She called from her cell phone as she was threading her way through Plano traffic. Holly was always multitasking.
    I told her about the meeting with the real estate agent.
    “Want to grab a Starbucks this morning?” she offered.
    The cabinets at Poppy’s house flashed through my mind. “I think I’m going to hang out here and climb Mount