But what really bothered me was that he thought whatever errand they were about to run was the worst thing in the world that could happen. Clearly he’d never met a man like Joseph.

What I wouldn’t give for a trip to the Safeway right then and there. I thought about helping Momma push the shopping cart around, and tickling Lily’s little piggies so she wouldn’t fuss. I remembered the heavenly scent of fresh baked doughnuts in the bakery’s display case, the way Momma would tell me to pick one for each of us for the next day’s breakfast.

There I was, picturing cake doughnuts oozing with rainbow-covered sprinkles, long johns coated with chocolate icing, when that lady started toward me, and instinctively my feet began a retreat. “Can I help you?” she asked, coming down the driveway to where I stood on the opposite side of the street, staring at her family. Her eyes, brown and runny, lined with bags, were tired, her hair slick, as though she hadn’t found the time for a shower that day. “Are you lost, honey?”

And things came at me quickly, things I hadn’t seen before: the green shamrocks taped to the windows of the home, shamrocks we never used to own. The black lettering on the mailbox: Brigman. A dog barking from the front window, big, like a German shepherd, its head poking through lacy curtains that were never there. A wooden rocking chair on the tiny front porch, a gnome holding a welcome sign. That boy with the ugly pout on his face or the older one, who now reemerged from the car to see who the heck his mother was talking to, who walked down the drive to meet his mother, who asked again, “Is there something I can help you with?” as I turned around and began to run.

This was not my home.

The realization stole the breath right from my lungs and I found myself gasping for air as I tore down Canyon Drive, past parked cars and fenced-in yards, mailboxes and splotchy lawns, kicking the gravel up from the street as I ran. The world spun in hurried circles. I cut through a lawn, in case that woman in her red hatchback, Mrs. Brigman, tried to follow. I tripped over a boulder and landed splat on the ground in the back of some stranger’s yard. The knees of my pants were soaking wet, muddy from the melting snow. The suitcase fell open and emptied itself onto the soggy lawn, the books and dollar bills peppering the snow. I grabbed quickly, stuffing my belongings back into place before slamming the suitcase closed.

I didn’t see it right away. In fact, I almost didn’t see it at all. I was standing up, hoping and praying someone wasn’t at the back window of that home watching me, when something—bright in the otherwise white snow—caught my eye, and I reached down and picked it up, and there, in my hand, was a photo of Momma, the very same one Joseph had years ago forced me to tear to shreds. That photo Joseph made me march down the steps of the Omaha home and throw into the trash. I remember that day, Matthew and Isaac sitting at the table watching me, watching as I dropped the hundreds of pieces of Momma into the garbage can before I walked upstairs, like Joseph had told me to do, to pray. Pray for God’s forgiveness.

Matthew had pulled those pieces from the garbage can and, like a jigsaw puzzle, taped them back together. A million pieces of Scotch tape lined the back of that picture, making it thick and sturdy, white, ragged creases lining Momma’s beautiful face, her long black hair, her sapphire eyes. I held Momma in my hands, there, in her peridot-colored dress—a frock as Momma used to call it, the bateau neckline and cap sleeves seamed by Joseph’s poisonous hand.

Where had Matthew kept it all those years since he pulled it from the trash?

Why had he kept it from me for so long?

But of course, I knew why. He was worried Joseph would see.

But he didn’t have to worry anymore.

It had been years since I’d seen Momma. In my mind, the black hair had dissolved, the blue eyes had become diluted, like a watered-down can of pop. Her smile had shrunk to half its size, and only sometimes did I remember she wore bright red lipstick on the days when Daddy was home. But there she was: the pitch-black hair and sapphire eyes, berry bliss lipstick smoothed on her lips. And she was laughing. I could hear it, the laughter, from that photograph, and I could see Momma, just seconds after I’d snapped that crooked photo, snatch the camera from my hand and take a shot of me, and after we’d developed the roll at the Safeway, we each held on to the photo of the other, so we’d always be together even when we weren’t together. I love you like x’s love o’s, she’d said, planting a big red kiss on my cheek, and I’d stared at that kiss in the rearview mirror of the old Datsun Bluebird, refusing to wipe my cheek clean.

I pressed that photo of Momma to my heart and knew then, bawling my eyes out in the backyard of some stranger’s home, on my knees in the vanishing March snow, that Momma was there even if she wasn’t there.

Momma would never, ever, ever in a million years leave me.

HEIDI

I press my baby into me and sink into the rocking chair, vowing never, ever, ever to leave her again. She’s begun to cry now, her cry angry and infuriated as she seizes strands of my hair in the palm of her hand and pulls, hard, howling without cease, the kind of cry that forces the breath from her lungs, and she finds herself gasping, suddenly, for air. I rise from the chair and begin to tread throughout the room, aware of the murmur of Nina Simone that seeps through the wall from Graham’s home: I Put a Spell on You, playing louder now than ever before.

Or is that simply my imagination?

Is he trying to drown out the sound of my baby’s indignant cry? Or send me a message? I envision Graham, at that moment, still unclad, wondering why it was I had to leave when I’d only just arrived.

And then, I think, what would he do, there in his home, with his undershirt discarded, his jeans unzipped; would he phone a lady friend to fill the space where I’d just been? I try not to think about it, to think about some beautiful blonde woman taking my place on the edge of the unmade bed, and Graham, blind to the change, aware only of some woman’s hands on him. I will the image out of my mind: me on Graham’s bed, his body hovering above mine. I think what I would have done, how far I would have gone had it not been for the baby.

But no, I remind myself. The baby was asleep. Or was she? I wonder, finding myself suddenly oh-so confused, mindful of the cry—desperate and helpless, completely forlorn—that I heard from Graham’s room. That cry plays over and over again in my mind, a soundtrack to accompany the scene: Graham slipping an undershirt up over his head, the oblique and abdominal muscles, the faint, fair hair, the brass button of his jeans.

And then: that cry.

The baby did cry, I tell myself. She was not asleep.

I move the baby back and forth, up and down in a gentle seesaw motion, anything to calm her down. She’s angry with me for leaving. I say it over and over again, “I’m so sorry. Mommy will never, ever leave you again,” and I smother her with kisses in a weak attempt at an apology.

I am not a good mother, I tell myself. A good mother wouldn’t have left her alone and walked out of the room. A moment of weakness, I think, remembering all too well the condom abandoned in the pocket of Chris’s trousers, and the thought of it, the thought of that shiny blue wrapper, sends me into a rapid descent: heartbeat unsettled, hands that feel like sludge.

In the kitchen, I prepare a bottle, knowing, as I always do, as the baby nuzzles her nose into the black crepe dress, that she is hungry. I set the formula into the bottle, add water and shake: a counterfeit reproduction of the sustenance her mother is meant to provide. I try to remember why it was that I decided to bottle feed my baby, why I did not breast feed. Or did I breast feed? And I find that, standing there, in the kitchen, I cannot remember. Cancer, I tell myself, but then: cancer?