As soon as I walk out my front door the next morning, I march over to the security guard stationed out front in his car.

I try to tell him that he has the day off because “I’m going out of state, and I’m sure your boss doesn’t pay for you to leave California.”

He smiles kindly like I don’t have a clue what I’m saying. “I’m Dale,” he says as he extends his hand to me through the open window. “And I’m coming with you. The boss will kill me if I let you out of my sight.”

I roll my eyes.

“In fact,” Dale continues, “he told me that if you decided to go to Tucson, he’d like to lend you his plane.”

My blood starts to boil. First, he breaks up with me, and then he has the nerve to think he can control the way I travel?

“You tell that boss of yours he can suck it,” I say.

Dale chuckles. “I’ll make sure to tell him you said so.”

“Good. You tell him I said exactly that. And do me a favor—when you check in with him tonight, don’t tell him I was in Tucson.”

“It’s company policy not to share personal information.” Dale gives me a reassuring wink. “Your road trip is your business, ma’am.”

Relief fills me, and I flash him a smile. “Thank you.”

I turn away from his car window and head for my own vehicle. Knowing Dale is behind me the entire time, I’m much more conscious not to go over the speed limit.

But I avoid rush hour both when I leave L.A. and when I enter Tucson, and I pull onto my mother’s street feeling fairly calm.

I thought about trying to find Marianne Gordon once before. When I was thirteen and Julie Morse threw me into the mud in front of the entire class for not having “real parents,” I thought about finding my mother and kicking her ass like Julie kicked mine.

I park across the road from her house again and spend a moment in my car looking in the mirror. I apply more lipstick, more blush, and way too much eyeliner. Shit.

I desperately try to rub some of the makeup off, but it doesn’t look much different. Finally, I give up. I grab my purse, checking to make sure the money’s inside, and I get out of the car, locking the door behind me.

Dale is parked a half block away, and I know by now, he won’t get out of his car unless he senses trouble.

I reach the front door of the house and stare at the doorbell. I ignore the trembling of my finger and hold it with my other hand to make myself push the bell.

When somebody actually answers, I don’t know what to do. I hadn’t thought past this moment.

Except one thing’s for sure…I recognize the woman in the open doorway.

She’s tall, not quite as tall as I am, but she has the same blond hair. Her smile, pleasant but guarded, is what makes me sure. It looks like mine.

“Can I help you?” she says politely.

Part of me hoped she’d squeal with delight and throw her arms around me, recognizing me immediately as the daughter she hadn’t seen since she was four.

Of course, none of the above happens. She has a cold. She sneezes all over me and then grabs a tissue from under her shirt sleeve and blows into it.

“Sorry,” she mutters. “Bad cold.”

I wipe my cheek where she hit me with her sneeze and straighten my shoulders.

“Marianne Gordon?” I say to be sure.

“Yes. Who’s asking?” She gasps. “Are you with the casino? Come back to collect your debt? I told you already—I don’t have the money. If I did, I’d sure give it to you.”

“I’m not with the casino.” I take a deep breath. “Mom. It’s me. Jasalie.” My mother reels backward and has to grab onto the doorframe to stop from falling over.

“Jasalie.” Her eyes go wide and her face turns white as a sheet. “Wow. You’re all grown up.”

I want to remind her that’s what happens when you don’t see someone for over twenty years, but I stop myself.

“May I come in?” I ask her.

“Oh.” She starts. “Yes. Come in. Don’t mind the mess.”

But I can’t help from ogling the place as she leads me into the living room. Crap is everywhere. Clothes are strewn around, and takeout food containers are lying out half-open. I don’t remember this part of living with my mother. Maybe she wasn’t as messy back then.

I glance out the back window of the living room. The wide deck leads onto a small yard, but the view is what gets my attention.

Mountains fill up the expanse. All I see are mountains.

“What a beautiful view,” I say softly.

She glances where I’m looking.

“Isn’t it gorgeous? That’s what sold me on this place. I wanted to pass it down to you you know. You’re in my will. Despite…” She trails off. “Well, you know.”

“Despite the fact that you left me with social services?” I say.

Her eyes fill with emotion. Maybe I’m imagining it, but I could swear I see remorse.

“Was our house like this?” I ask her as she gestures me to take a seat.

I move aside a pile of coats and sit down gingerly on the edge of the couch.

“No, you never lived here,” she answers, misunderstanding my question.

“No. I know that. I meant, was our house messy like this?”

“Oh.” She thinks for a second. “I guess. I’ve always been a bit of a saver. Don’t like to throw stuff out.”

Really? You seemed to have no trouble getting rid of me.

My mother awkwardly takes a seat in the armchair across from me. She crosses her legs slowly and then begins to shake her foot in the air. Over and over again.

“So,” she begins. “How have you been?”

I can’t take my eyes off her shaking foot.

“I’ve been okay. Working at an ad firm in L.A.”

“Oh, nice.” She nods. “And are you married?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, me neither.” She takes a deep breath. “Look, Jasalie, this is rather awkward for me.”

For you? What do you think it’s like for me? I’m the one putting myself out there. I’m the one who has to worry about being rejected.

“I just don’t interact with people real well,” she says. “You know that.”

“No, Mom, I don’t know that. How would I?”

“Well, we did know each other once. It was a long time ago, but…”

“Mom, I was four!” I stare at her. “Seriously, what do you think I remember? Other than the fact that you abandoned me?”

“I did not abandon you, Jasalie.” She says it firmly like a therapist helped her reach this decision. “I gave you up for a better life.”

“You sent me to social services with hundreds of other kids. I became part of the system.” I didn’t realize I was still so angry about it, but my shaking voice gives me away. “It’s not like you helped to hand-pick a family for me.”

“I did the best I could. I even moved us away from Tucson and out to L.A. for what I thought would be a better job. Turned out to be a hoax. And after that…I didn’t have a choice. I really didn’t.”

I stand up. “You always have a choice, Mom. Always.”

“Jasalie.” Her voice shakes. “I’m sorry. I loved you. I still do.”

“You don’t let go of people that you love. Not unless they ask you to. And I didn’t ask.”

“I couldn’t be a mother,” she says. “I tried. I’m just no good.”

“That’s not even why I came here,” I say, searching for that place of calm I had on the drive. I reach into my purse and pull out the envelope with her name written across it. “Here.” I hand it to her. “This is for you. I hope it will help you to keep your home. Before I met you again, I thought…” I shake my head. “I don’t know what I thought. That we could heal each other. And I appreciate you wanting to leave this house to me. I think it’s a beautiful space. But it’s yours, and what’s in that envelope has nothing to do with me. I just wanted you to be happy and to feel safe. Because I know far too well what it’s like to feel the opposite of safe and secure, and I thought maybe giving this to you would help break the cycle.”

Once I’m done speaking, I’m not sure what to do next. Now that I’ve met her in the flesh, I can’t imagine what helping my mother could do for me at this point.

“I hope you feel better,” I say as I turn to go.

“Won’t you stay a little longer?” My mother still hasn’t glanced at the envelope in her hand. Her eyes are filled with tears. “I’d like to try again.”

I shake my head. “It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late.”

“No,” I say. “Sometimes it is.”

It’s not until I quietly shut the door behind me and run to the car that I see my keys nicely settled inside on the front seat.

Crap. I use my cell phone to call roadside assistance.

An hour later, my mother and I sit at her kitchen table with cups of tea while I continue to wait for my car to be unlocked. My very emphatic “see you later, Mom, thanks for nothing” was made far less powerful by the fact that I couldn’t get into my getaway car. Yes, I could have asked Dale for help. But when faced with the choice of sitting with my biological mother who abandoned me versus having Dylan potentially find out I needed his security team to help me out of a jam, I chose option A. I know Dale swore about privacy and all that, but I didn’t want to take the risk.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” my mother asks me.

She touches my shoulder, and I smell it then.

“You still wear that perfume,” I say.

“Ruby XO,” she says.

“I remember.”

“Really?” She smiles now.

“Yep. That and Malibu.”

“The beach.” She nods. “Gorgeous there. When I first saw Malibu, I thought maybe dreams really do come true. But I was a single mother, and it was very difficult. You were beautiful on that beach, though. You still are.”

I swallow down the lump in my throat, and we return to an awkward silence.

“So is there a boyfriend? Someone special?”

I shrug. “There was.”

“Really?” Big smile.

“Why do you care?”

“Because I want you to be happy. Just because I couldn’t figure it out doesn’t mean you need to carry on the gene.”

“Well, some habits are hard to break.” I stare down into my tea.

“Try,” she urges. “Because pain isn’t worth wallowing in. Believe me.”

“There was someone,” I find myself saying. “He was the best.”

“And he’s gone?”

“Yeah.” I look out the window at my car.

Is Emergency Roadside Care ever going to get here?

“What happened?” she asks.

I quirk an eyebrow at her. But she seems genuinely curious.

“We just broke up.” I make a face. “Until he dumped me, he found it all so easy.”

“Found what easy?”

“Love. Sharing. Giving. All that stuff.”

She starts to cry. “I’m sorry. I screwed that up big-time. I wasn’t any good at love. I was in a lot of pain back then.”

The longer I listen to her cry, the more I truly feel for her. Because she really didn’t know how. And that means somebody must not have showed her, either.

“It’s okay, Mom.”

“Really?” she says.

“I’m not sure. But I don’t want to keep hating you for this.”

Because staying angry with her is doing me no good anymore. Whatever sort of self-survival and self-protection hating my mother afforded me in years past, I realize in this moment that it’s doing me shit right now.

“I’m glad.” She smiles at me and finally looks down at the envelope, which has migrated with her to the kitchen table. “So what’s this about?”

I swallow. “Why don’t you open it and find out?”

She takes forever to cut open the top of the envelope and even longer to pull out the check.

Her face is unreadable as she looks at it. Finally, she furrows her brows and looks up at me.

“My name is on this.”

I nod. “Yes. It’s for you. Twenty-five thousand dollars. What you need to pay off your gambling debts so you can keep this house and start fresh.”

She was already weepy; now she’s downright sobbing.

Scared she’s going to soak the check, I reach over and gently take it out of her hands, placing it at the other end of the table.

“You’ll pay off the debts with this?” I say. “If not, I’ll write it out to the people you owe the money to instead.”

She shakes her head. “Not necessary. I went to gamblers’ anonymous and quit the habit.” Her wet eyes focus on me. “But why? Why would you want to help me out after the way I treated you?”

I fidget with my hands in my lap. “Like I said to you earlier, I want to break the cycle. I want you to feel empowered again or maybe for the first time in your life. And I would like a place to call home, somewhere I can come to visit. Not to live,” I add firmly. “But to visit. My apartment is in L.A.”

Twenty minutes later, my mother has stopped crying, and she’s even placed a call to the casino and set up an appointment for tomorrow morning so she can make the payment in person.

“You’re a generous person with a huge heart,” she says to me, and I catch the pride in her voice.

And yes, that means something. Having my mother approve of me means more than I’d like to admit.

“I hope that man you care about so much appreciates you,” she says.

“He did once,” I say, wanting to kick myself for the slight tremble in my voice. “Far more than I deserved. But we’re finished.”

She rests her chin on her hand. “I thought I loved your father. But really, I barely knew Cort.”

I stare at her. “You know his name?”

“Of course I know his name. He’s the father of my only child.”

She grabs a pen and pad of paper and starts to write. “He lives in Los Angeles now. Works for an insurance company.

“Does he know I exist?”

“I wrote him about you. Dropped the letter off in his mailbox. I was too scared to tell him in person.” She shrugs. “We weren’t together anymore when I found out I was pregnant. I felt all alone. He called me. Offered to be a part of it. But I knew his offer was half-hearted at best. He’s a good man, but a very nervous person.” She hands me the piece of paper. “I just looked him up recently myself. You know I was curious. I didn’t contact him, but I know this is him.”

I look down at her loopy script in black ink.

Cort Tinley

Waters Rowe Insurance

1400 Salteenoa Street, Los Angeles

Driving home through the desert is an empty feeling. Dale stays behind me the whole way, but other than him, parts of the trip are devoid of cars, and I can actually hear myself breathe.

I love being by myself, but it can be awfully lonely. And I’m tired of being lonely. I nearly reach for my cell to call Dylan, and then I remember exactly how he broke things off.

So I curse him out in my mind instead.

When I finally get home long after midnight, I crawl into bed but lie awake for a long time. My body’s exhausted, but my brain won’t turn off.

I get out of bed and go to the kitchen where all my sculptures are sitting in their boxes.

And then I sit down on the carpet and sculpt one more. Sculpting is the one true way I can trust my heart, and I need to figure out what to make of her.

When I wake up in the morning, at first I don’t remember. It’s not until I get up to pee and see the sculpture staring up at me from the floor that I flash back to yesterday. Yesterday in Tucson, when I was face-to-face with my mother for the first time since I was four.

I sink down to my knees and touch her. She’s pregnant, this figure I sculpted. Pregnant and about to burst. And she’s happy. She’s full of hope for the future and for her child. She doesn’t know about the pain that’s to come. She doesn’t know how ill-prepared and young she is. All she knows is she’s happy in this moment.

I stroke her hair as I realize I have an advantage over this woman. Because I know the effect it had on my own life. And I made a promise to myself years ago that I wouldn’t do it the same way.

But until yesterday, I didn’t believe my promise. I didn’t believe I really could do things differently. Because sometimes, what you fight you become. I had to see my mother as an adult and forgive her as much as I’m able in order to trust that I can be different.

Late that night, I walk out of the community college art room with the last box in my hand and get into my car.

When I get home, I take the boxes into my apartment and carefully set out on the floor all my pieces from the time I spent in Arizona. They’re all fired and permanent. With the way things ended between Dylan and me, the word permanent has a difficult ring to it. It feels like a warning label to “watch your back” and “don’t believe it will last.”

But as I touch one of the pieces, it’s solid as can be.

Tucson may become a distant memory, and it may be painful as hell, but it’s a permanent one, an experience I can’t take back and pretend never happened. And as much as it hurt when it ended, I wouldn’t take it back. Dylan Wild changed me, and I’m forever grateful to him for that.

I always promised myself I’d never give up. Not like she did. And I don’t want to have lied to myself all these years.