I was at mile 680 on Interstate 40 when I stopped at a rest area in Arkansas and called my daughter. Not to ask if I could come. To tell her I was on my way.
The phone rang four times. I thought it would go to voicemail again. I'd practiced what I'd say: "Kate, it's Mom. I'm coming to see you and Ava. I'll be there tomorrow by dinner."
But she picked up.
"Mom? What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." I was sitting on the hood of my Corolla, watching a family walk a dog toward the grass. "I'll be there tomorrow."
A pause. "Tomorrow? You're driving?"
"I'm already on the road."
"Mom, you can't just—"
"I can, actually." I said it about as gently as I could. "I'll explain when I get there."
"Mom—"
"That's what you said last time." I hung up.
I got back in the car and checked the passenger seat. The folded piece of paper was still there, under my purse. The list from my refrigerator. I'd written it eleven years ago, three weeks after Ray died. Right after the funeral, when I was standing in the kitchen in Toledo and didn't know what day it was.
The list said:
*Take Kate to see the cherry blossoms in Washington.*
*Go to Mackinac Island and have fudge.*
*Learn to make pierogi like Ray's mother did.*
*Read the books on Ray's nightstand.*
Four things. Eleven years of "someday." I'd done none of it.
Fourteen months. That's what the oncologist gave me last Tuesday. Not "we'll see." Not "treatment might help." Fourteen months, give or take.
I'd sat at the kitchen table with my coffee and watched it go cold. I'd always been the kind of person who said "I'll drink it when it cools down." Then I'd forget it was there.
The next morning, I took the list off the fridge. The magnet from the Toledo Zoo fell to the floor. I left it there.
I went to the bank and took out $3,600 in cash. "Traveling," I told the teller. She asked if I wanted traveler's checks. I said cash was fine.
Then I packed a bag. Three pairs of jeans, four shirts, my pills, the list. I got in the Corolla and headed south.
The drive took two days. I stopped for the night in Little Rock because my eyes were going blurry around dusk. I ate at a Waffle House off the highway — eggs over easy, wheat toast, coffee that the waitress kept refilling. Her name tag said "Darlene." She didn't ask why I was traveling alone.
When I crossed into Texas the next afternoon, my phone buzzed. Kate. I let it ring. Then I sent her a text: *20 minutes away. Please don't be mad.*
She wrote back: *I'm not mad. I'm scared.*
That stopped me. I turned into a Buc-ee's parking lot and sat for a minute. My daughter was scared. Scared of me, maybe. Or scared of what I was carrying with me. Either way, I was the one who'd made her feel that way.
I drove the rest of the way with one hand on the wheel and the other on the folded list.
Kate's house in Round Rock was smaller than I'd pictured. A beige one-story with a yard the size of a postage stamp. A pink bicycle lay on its side by the front steps. Next to it, a yellow plastic slide with a crack running down the middle.
I rang the bell at 5:47 in the evening. The light was going orange between the houses.
Kate opened the door. She was wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt that said "H-E-B" in faded letters. Her hair was shorter than the last time I'd seen her, which was — I had to count — the Christmas before last. Almost two years.
"Mom."
"Hi, sweetheart."
She didn't hug me. She didn't open the door wider. She just stood there, one hand on the frame, looking past me at my car.
"You really drove all the way from Ohio?"
"One thousand one hundred forty-two miles," I said. "I watched the odometer."
"Why?"
"Can I come in? I need to sit down."
She stepped back. I followed her into a living room with a brown couch, a rug with a juice stain near the corner, and a TV showing some cartoon with singing animals. On the floor in front of it, a little girl with dark curls was building something with plastic blocks.
"Ava," Kate said. "That's your grandma."
The little girl turned around. She looked at me with Kate's eyes. "Grandma?"
"Hi, Ava."
She looked at Kate, then back at me. "Are you going to stay here?"
"I don't know yet," I said. "I might."
Kate gestured toward the couch. I sat down. The cushion sagged in the middle. Ava went back to her blocks.
Kate didn't sit. She stood in front of me, arms crossed. "Why are you here?"
I reached into my purse and took out the folded paper. I passed it to her.
She didn't take it. "What's that?"
"Just read it."
She took the paper and unfolded it. I watched her eyes move down the list. When she looked up, her face was different. Softer, but also more hurt.
"This is it? You drove eighteen hours for this?"
"I drove eighteen hours because I didn't have time to wait for you to call me back."
"I didn't call you back because I didn't know what to say." Her voice cracked on the last word.
I stood up. "Say something now."
She looked at the list again. "You want to see the cherry blossoms? That's what this is about?"
"I have fourteen months, Kate."
That landed. She sat down on the floor, right there in front of me, like her legs had given out. Ava looked up from her blocks.
"Mommy?"
"I'm okay." Kate wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Fourteen months?"
"That's what the doctor said. I got a second opinion. That's why it's fourteen and not nine."
Kate closed her eyes. She sat on the floor, with the list in her hands, and didn't say anything for a long time.
Ava stood up and walked over to me. She put her small hand on my knee. "Grandma, do you want to see my blocks?"
"Sure," I said, and I got down on the floor with her.
Kate watched us for a moment. Then she said, "I'll make lasagna for dinner. You used to make it for me."
"I still do. Every Sunday." I said it to Ava, not to Kate.
And that's how it started. Not with a big speech or a dramatic apology. With lasagna and plastic blocks and a four-year-old who didn't know enough to be angry with me.
After dinner, after Ava was in bed, Kate and I sat on the back patio. It was dark, and the air smelled like mowed grass and barbecue from a neighbor's yard.
"I'm not trying to make you feel guilty," I said. "I'm trying to make up for lost time."
"Mom, I don't—"
"Let me finish. I had eleven years to do one thing on that list. One. And I didn't. Because I kept thinking there'd be time. There isn't anymore. So I'm doing it now."
"What about the pierogi?" she asked. "You're not even going to try to learn that?"
"You can teach me. You make them better than I do anyway."
She laughed. Not a happy laugh — more like a release. "You always said mine were too thick."
"They were. But they were good."
We sat in the dark for a while. A dog barked somewhere in the neighborhood. Then Kate said, "I'll take the week off. We'll go to Washington. Ava's never been on a plane."
"Neither have I. Ray always drove."
That broke something. We both started laughing — the real kind, the kind that comes when you've been holding your breath too long. Ava called out from her room: "Mommy? Grandma? What's funny?"
"Nothing, baby, go back to sleep," Kate called back. Then she turned to me. "We're driving though. I don't trust my stomach on planes."
"Deal."
We drove to Washington the next week. Not the cherry blossom season — we'd missed it by three weeks. The tourist bureau said the blooms were "past peak but still visible," which turned out to mean most of the pink had blown into the gutters. It didn't matter. Ava ran through the petals on the ground like a small tornado. Kate took photos of everything. I stood by the Tidal Basin and watched them.
On the last morning, before we headed back, I took an envelope from my suitcase. Inside was the deed to the house in Toledo. I'd had a lawyer sign it over to Kate two weeks before I left Ohio. I'd been waiting for the right time.
We were sitting in a diner near the hotel. Kate was stirring sugar into her coffee. The waitress had just dropped off the check. Ava was drawing on the placemat with crayons.
I slid the envelope across the table.
"What's this?" Kate asked.
"The deed. The house is yours now."
She stopped stirring. "Mom, I don't want the house."
"I know. But I want you to have it. Not after I'm gone. Now."
"Why?"
"Because I want to see what you do with it. Sell it. Rent
