Page 12 of In a Word, Yes

I can’t help breaking into a smirk.Mom means well, I tell myself. This is her love language. “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “Besides...” A sudden sauciness courses through me. May as well bait her. I shift into a low, wily tone. “I already know how to reach Ian. He invited me.Personally.”

“Ohhh?” Mom shimmies her eyebrows. “This Ian person is awriter, and you’refriends? Is he, ah, by any chance unattached?”

And so easily she falls, hook, line, and sinker. As if it’s that simple to just—oh, I don’t know—to justhappen upona new lifepartner, someone who, for starters, is worthy of Chase, someone willing to play the long game, come what may.

Someone we can trust.

“Mom.” I drag the word out, channeling my inner teenager.

She glares at me playfully. “Don’t bleat. Thou art not a sheep.”

Four

hiraeth(n.): a nostalgic longing for a place that can never be revisited

Carly

“Carlotta. That’s a pretty name,” the young woman behind the United Airlines check-in counter says absently, viewing my driver’s license. But then her gaze meets mine, and there it is. The look. “Oh! Oh gosh. You’re—” Another glance at my ID.

I smile. “I go by Carly.”

“Right! Oh gosh. You’re her. You’re Carly Montgomery. Well, duh, you know that! But oh gosh, my mom is such a huge fan! I mean, I am, too, of course”—the dear girl’s cheeks now match the shade of her lipstick—“but my mom has led, like, I don’t know, four thousand of your Bible studies at her church, and—oh wow, I can’t wait to tell her you came through my station!”

“That is soprecious.” I scan her name tag fleetly, which is my one superpower. “Can I just tell you,Nicole, you have absolutely made my day. Please do this. Please tell your mother I said thank you. Would you do that for me, sweetie? It’s only because of thefaithfulness of women like your mother partnering with me that I get to do what I do.”

And I mean every word, no matter how many times I’ve recited this.

“I will!” she says, bobbing her head as if she doesn’t know what to do next. Despite the line of travelers stacked up behind me, Nicole’s earlier efficiency has ground to a halt. I extend a hand to retrieve my ID. For a moment, she stares blankly at my empty palm. And then, “Oh! Oh, right, here you go. Enjoy your flight, Mrs. Montgomery. Looks like it’s right on time. In fact, you better hurry!”

I’m still aware of her gaze boring into my backside as I wheel my carry-on away. Fortunately, my PreCheck status means I get to go zippity-zip-zip-zip right on by the row of people waiting to go through the standard screening procedure. Still, this is so unlike me. I never allow such thin margins for navigating an airport, even a puny one like central Oregon’s.

Then again, rarely have I been given the chance to immerse myself so deliciously in my daughter’s world. So, no regrets.

“Just lock up when you leave,” Lucy called this morning as she headed out the door for work. And I meant to leave, I truly did. Except, somehow I instead found myself barefoot, hair piled high with a scrunchie, wiping down her kitchen from top to bottom. Gloriously, stupidly content. Investigating where she kept all her cleaning things and what brands she likes to use. Matter of fact, nothing in a blue moon has topped off my emotional tank like leaving a gleaming kitchen for my sweet baby girl to come home to.

For a moment there, I even permitted myself to imagine a different sort of life, one in which I’m able to do things like this for her more often. To really be there for her and Chase. I’d have done more—windows, dusting, bathrooms—but couldn’t chance it. Where is the line between helpful and intrusive? How am I ever to learn? I can’t exactly gain gobs of practice navigating my relationship with Lucy while five gargantuan states separate us.

Maybe, too, I hadn’t wanted to leave because her apartment smelled so—oh, how to describe it? Fresh? Compelling? Like grapefruit and rosemary ... and something else.Life.Yes, that’s it, it smelled alive and grounded and relevant. A potted rosemary plant trailed from the kitchen windowsill. But what was the source of that citrusy scent? Eventually I spied a small frosted-pink bottle sitting pretty on a wall shelf. Several skinny sticks poked out of it, and they smelled amazing.

Immediately, I texted Lucy.

Lu! Where can I get some of these scrumptious sticks that smell like grapefruit? What do you call them?

Her message came right away.

Reed diffuser. Little blue shop called All the Feels has them ...on Birch next to the shoe shop, Haute Diggity Clog. You’ll love it, it’s totally twee. Say hi to Poppy if you go!

So I went. And let me just say, downtown Charity Falls is the definition of quaint. Vintage lampposts. Western-fronted shops. Mounds of flowers still blooming. And oh, did that bright-blue gift store ever deliver on the promise of its name! Glass chandeliers dangling from a tangerine ceiling, floral-accented everything, softness and scent wherever I turned. Must be what Lucy meant bytweetyor whatever.

It was a silly thing, inexplicable, really, my overwhelming need to make that small purchase even at the risk of missing my flight. But at least now I carry theessenceof my daughter’s life home with me.

But as I near TSA PreCheck, my reverie breaks. The area’s roped off—currently unavailable, according to the sign. Well, isn’t this a nice how-d’ya-do? I have to wait through that line over there?Good gravy, can I even make my plane? Why this suddenly bringson a childlike desire to cry or call my mother, I have no clue.Get a grip, woman.

Never again will I be able to call my mother. Here I am on the far,faredge of middle age—and by that, I mean that if middle age were a pirate ship, I’m hanging ten off the end of the gangplank, staring at the murky waters below. Yet somehow, in moments like this, I feel I’m a sixty-year-old orphan. And I hate it.

I’d known my emotions were tender again today, but good heavens.

Rolling to a stop behind a young father wearing one of those front baby carriers, I crane my neck, hoping for a peek at the little darling. But it’s only an itty-bitty lump, curled and tucked away out of sight as if still in the womb. The woman with him, presumably the mother, wears athletic clothing and grips the hand of a toddler girl with flyaway honey-blond curls. Man alive, are those curls out of control. How precious! But golly, what a chore. Nothing I’d ever been tasked with when Lucy and Vanessa were small and cherubic. Both my girls were blessed with thick, dark hair and only a hint of wave.