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“Sure.” They slipped on shoes and headed outside. There weren’t many places walkable from Leo’s condo complex, but there was a nice little gravel path that ranged around the property, past the amenities Leo paid for in his monthly fee but rarely used: the dog park (Neptune was too nervous around other dogs), the playground, the swimming pool, the courtyard. Their feet found a crunchy rhythm, and they relaxed into a comfortable silence as Neptune sniffed at everything and then peed on everything.

This was the first time his mom had actually come to stay with him; usually he’d gone to visit her in Italy, or they’d taken a trip together somewhere and stayed in a hotel. She’d surprised him this year by asking if she could come visit—apparently her boyfriend would be staying with his daughter for a few weeks after the birth of her first child, and the daughter wasn’t entirely comfortable with Leo’s mom tagging along. “Which is totally understandable,” she said, seeming unbothered. “I imagine that when I come stay with you after you have your first child, you’d probably be weirded out to have Giorgio there, too. I know you two are friendly, but there’s a gap between ‘friendly’ and ‘roommates while postpartum.’ ”

It was amazing how she said it so matter-of-factly—after you have your first child—as if they both assumed it would happen. Leo almost snorted, but he didn’t want to deal with the consequences of snorting at something his mother said. It was weird, their relationship—he’d spent every day with her for years and years, she’d been the central figure in his life, and then suddenly she was just…gone. Like she’d done her duty and then it was time for her. But this woman he heard from in Italy, going on wild adventures and romancing foreign men (well, man, though she’d dropped hints about swinging that Leo always shut down right away because he did not need to hear that) and spending so much of her time on boats that she claimed to be landsick with her feet on solid ground, was someone totally different from the woman he’d known back in New Jersey and then in Michigan.

He took a deep breath. He and his mom didn’t talk about deep things; they talked about pasta and video games (she’d resolutely played the entirety of Washing Dishes at the End of the World) and the sights of wherever they were seeing. But there were no sights to see here. “Do you think the person you are in Italy is the same person you were back when you were in New Jersey?” Maybe he just hadn’t seen it then. He’d been a kid, after all. Kids didn’t actually see their parents as people. But maybe she was going out late then, having affairs, eating bucketloads of pasta with men who had different accents.

No. He would’ve noticed that, right? Even as oblivious a kid as him would’ve noticed all the pasta on her breath. She never ate pasta back then; he remembered that much. She’d always been on some kind of low-carb diet to stay slim, while now neither she nor Giorgio seemed to mind that her hips and belly had grown round, her cheeks full.

He was surprised by her belly laugh. Bigger belly, bigger laugh. “I want to say no,” she said. “I did all I could to leave her behind when I went to Italy. But you can’t really leave a version of yourself behind, can you?”

“So you’re still the same person,” Leo said. “You just…changed. A lot.” He felt silly saying it aloud like that, but somehow he felt the need to voice it. To hear himself say it and maybe to hear his mother, who’d spent so long as his ultimate authority on things, say it back.

“I changed a lot,” his mom said, and he got the feeling she’d make a joke about it because that was what they did—they didn’t talk about serious things—except then her face changed. He didn’t even know how; all he knew was that one moment her expression was light and the next it looked as if she might be ready to share the nuclear codes. “Your father and I had a lot of trouble getting pregnant with you. It took a long time, and we weren’t sure if it would ever happen.”

Leo had never known that. He’d never thought to ask, he supposed. He had asked at least once why he was an only child, if they’d never wanted to have more, and his dad had said something about how Leo was enough for them. He’d never pushed harder, maybe, thinking back, because his mom had looked like she might cry.

“Even my pregnancy with you was touch and go,” she continued. “I’d lost pregnancies before you at different stages, so I didn’t truly believe you’d be mine until you were actually crying in my arms. And I don’t know, therapy wasn’t really a thing back then, and I punished myself for not being able to have more kids. I thought that maybe if I was the perfect mom, the perfect wife, then I’d be able to have more.”

“You were the perfect mom,” said Leo, because that was what she needed to hear. She waved him away.

“I tried so hard for so many years to show the world how perfect I could be. And then your father cheated on me! Honestly, we’d been having problems for years, and it didn’t come as the biggest shock in the world. But it did shake my worldview. Like, how dare he? All I’d done, all the effort I’d made, and it didn’t matter. No more kids, no more husband.” She shrugged. “So I vowed to change. I told myself that if impressing the world hadn’t worked, then I should just be happy. And I was happy, with you and my dad and my siblings in Michigan, and then you went off to college, and he died, and I got the opportunity to be selfish for the first time in years and years. So yes, I changed. I changed purposely, boldly, with the goal that your father would no longer recognize me.” She paused, then added, a little wistfully, “I hope that doesn’t mean you don’t recognize me anymore, either. I’ve been selfish, and yes, that was my goal, but I hope I haven’t drifted too far away from you.”

Leo wasn’t exactly sure what to say back to that because, honestly, she had kind of put herself out of his reach. But wasn’t that her right? How much did she actually owe him as her child? And really, she was here right now. When his dad died and he’d called her, she came. So that’s what he told her. She hugged him in response. “What are you really asking about, though?” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

They both watched Neptune snuffle at the roots of a bush before she said, “Were you really asking about me? Or are you asking about someone else? Your father?”

Hearing her mention his father brought that familiar twist of pain in his stomach, the one he kept thinking might lessen over the years and yet somehow never did. He’d heard somewhere that grief never actually got smaller; you just grew bigger to be able to keep it all inside you, and he thought maybe that was true. “No, Dad definitely changed,” Leo said and surprised himself again by realizing that was true, too. His dad had grown and changed and become a better man, which was part of the tragedy of it all, that Leo had been given only a few years with that better man. “And I’m glad he did.”

“Then who are you wondering about?” she asked. “Emily?”

Her name didn’t stab him in the heart the way it used to (which was fortunate, considering approximately one in every four women his age was named Emily). He didn’t make a habit of looking her up online, but last he’d seen, she’d gotten together with a coworker. He wished her well. “No, that came to its natural end,” he said, though natural was a stretch given all the crying. “Do you remember our old neighbor? Shira Levinson?”

Her snort was a piece of art. “Of course I remember Shira Levinson,” she said. “She was your best friend up until we moved. Every time we got into a fight in Michigan, that was what you threw in my face. I guess you felt too guilty to bring up your dad’s cheating, so you’d tell me you hated me because I moved you away from your best friend.”

“Oh,” Leo said. He had no memory of that. To be fair, the whole divorce-and-move thing had been so traumatic that most of his memories were of the weirdest, simplest things. The look of his bedroom wall, pockmarked with ghostly pale afterimages of the photos and posters that had once hung there, right before he left that house for what he thought was forever. His grandpa’s wife’s face when she came to meet them at the airport in Michigan, one of her eyebrows drawn on crookedly so that even when they pinched together in worry, she looked as though she were smirking. “Sorry. I know it wasn’t your fault.”

“Thanks for the apology so many years later,” she said. “But it’s okay. I knew you didn’t actually hate me. You hated the situation. And I hated that you’d never actually get to realize you were in love with her the whole time.”

Leo choked on air. “Excuse me?”

“Boys and girls can’t actually be that close of friends without something else bubbling up,” his mom said, which was problematic in all sorts of ways, but it was hard to call her out, considering that in this case it was true. “I could tell with you two that it was only a matter of time.” She squinted at him, veering into his path so that both he and Neptune had to stop short. Neptune’s leash wrapped around Leo’s ankles, literally binding him in place. “You were asking about her, huh? You guys reconnected, didn’t you? I remember you telling me that.”

He couldn’t exactly dodge the line of questioning when he couldn’t move, and despite a nudge with his foot, Neptune was content to lie down and spread his paws in the sun. So he spilled the whole story from the beginning, him kissing her and then her kissing him and then…whatever they were now.

“Well, you can’t let this be it,” his mom said immediately. “What kind of love story would that be?”

“Maybe it isn’t a love story,” said Leo.

“Of course it’s a love story,” she said impatiently. “Get it together. You’ve loved her your whole life.” He didn’t love her the last few years, not while he was with Emily. It seemed important to remind her of that because he wasn’t a cad who’d tie up someone’s life while pining for another woman, but his mom just snorted again. “Of course you were in love with Shira the whole time. Why else do you think you hesitated so much at the thought of getting married and having kids with Emily? Emily was perfect for you. You clearly cared about her. But you can’t give someone your heart when you’ve already given it to someone else.”

He wanted to protest, but it was true, wasn’t it? He hadn’t intended it. But it was what had happened. He’d been unfair to Emily. But at least he hadn’t married her, he told himself. At least he’d realized it before tying her down. “But Shira didn’t think I was good enough for her.”

“You’ve both changed,” his mom said. “Has she changed enough? I don’t know. I don’t know her well enough to say that. But look at me, Leo.” She gestured up and down, and Leo had to laugh. Extra years aside, she looked about as different from her past self as possible. No more dieting away the hips. No more close-lipped smiles. No more muted colors or pale-pink nails. “I can tell you with certainty that I’ve changed. You admitted yourself how your father changed. You should at least give her the chance to show you what’s different about her, too.”

His body lightened and not just because Neptune stood up from where he’d been lying on Leo’s foot. She was right. If change to the degree of his mother’s was possible, Shira could absolutely have changed sufficiently to think he was enough for her now.