I stared across the ocean.
“Sorry for what?”
“For treating you like you were supposed to keep taking care of me.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The sentence I had waited forty years to hear.
Strangely, I no longer needed it.
“I hope you meant it,” I said.
“I do.”
“And Chloe?”
“She understands now.”
I almost smiled.
“Does she?”
“She does.”
Silence stretched between us.
Then Austin whispered,
“Are you coming home?”
I looked around the cabin.
My suitcase.
The little vase of flowers I had bought that morning.
Ernest’s photograph beside the window.
“No.”
Austin went quiet.
“I mean… not yet.”
“Mom—”
“I love you, Austin.”
His voice cracked.
“I love you too.”
“But loving you doesn’t mean living for you.”
He began crying.
