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She did not push. She just looked at me with the steady attention of a woman who had been married to a man who did not talk much and had learned a long time ago that silence from a McKinney male was usually agreement.

“Bring her home,” she said finally. “When it’s ready. Not before. I don’t need to audition her. I want to meet her.”

“Okay.”

“And Evan.”

“Yeah.”

“The house in San Antonio Lena’s been sending me listings for. The one on the cul-de-sac.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to buy it.”

I set down my coffee.

“When?”

“Spring. After I put in my notice and St. Vincent’s replaces me, which they will handle badly and resent me for. I have earned that.” She folded her hands. “I want to be closer to Tommy. I want to be closer to you. I want Sunday dinner in a kitchen that is not mine. I have been alone in this house long enough.”

“Mom.”

“Don’t,” she said, and her voice did the thing it almost never did. “Don’t make it a whole conversation. Just say yes.”

“Yes.”

She nodded once. Picked up her coffee. Drank.

“Good.”

I walked Ranger out to the backyard while she showered. Stood on the back step where I had stood a thousand times as a kid, watching him dig small, unauthorized holes in the corner where he thought she could not see. The yard was the same. The fence needed paint. The oak in the back had grown another two feet since I was last here, and nobody had noticed but me.

She came out in a sweater and pants and no badge, which made her my mother again instead of the charge nurse on 4-West, and she walked me to the truck.

At the door, she put her hand on my cheek.

“You look like him today,” she said again. “The good parts.”

“I know.”

“Bring her next time.”

“I will.”

She kissed my forehead one more time. Stepped back. Let me go.

I pulled out of the driveway with Ranger in the passenger seat and my mother in the rearview, standing in her sweater on the front walk, watching me until the truck turned at the stop sign and I lost her to the angle.

I drove south with the windows down for the first hour.

Ranger slept. The sun worked its way west across the rear window. Texas gave me pastures, billboards, pump jacks, and the flatness it only gave at dusk. I did not turn on the radio.

I did not need to.

Somewhere outside Waco, my phone lit up.

Sam: You stopped?