Clara begins to write her goal for me, so I lean toward her and read it. Accept that your daughter wants to be an actress. She snaps the cap back on the Sharpie and puts it in the package.

Her goal makes me feel guilty. It’s not like I don’t want her to follow her dreams. I just want her to be realistic. “What are you going to do with an unusable degree if the acting thing doesn’t work out for you?”

Clara shrugs. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” She pulls her leg up onto the chair and rests her chin on her knee. “What about you? What did you want to be when you were my age?”

I stare at my board, wondering if I can even answer that question. I can’t. “I had no idea. I didn’t have any special talents. I wasn’t extremely smart in any one particular subject.”

“Were you passionate about anything like I am about acting?”

I think about her question for a moment, but nothing comes to mind. “I liked hanging out with my friends and not thinking about the future. I assumed I’d figure it out in college.”

Clara nods at the board. “I think that should be this year’s goal. You need to figure out what you’re passionate about. Because it can’t be being a housewife.”

“It could,” I say. “Some people are perfectly fulfilled in that role.” I used to be. I’m just not anymore.

Clara takes another sip of her soda. I write down her suggestion. Find my passion.

Clara may not want to know this, but she reminds me of myself at her age. Confident. Thought I knew everything. If I had to describe her in one word, it would be assured. I used to be assured, but now I’m just . . . I don’t even know. If I had to describe myself with one word based on my behavior today, it would be whiny.

“When you think of me, what one word comes to mind?”

“Mother,” she instantly says. “Housewife. Overprotective.” She laughs at that last one.

“I’m serious. What one word would you use to describe my personality?”

Clara tilts her head and stares at me for several long seconds. Then, in a very honest and serious tone, she says, “Predictable.”

My mouth falls open in offense. “Predictable?”

“I mean . . . not in a bad way.”

Can predictable sum a person up in a good way? I can’t think of a single person in the world who’d want to be summed up as predictable.

“Maybe I meant dependable,” Clara says. She leans forward and hugs me. “Night, Mom. Happy birthday.”

“Good night.”

Clara goes to her bedroom, unknowingly leaving me in a pile of hurt feelings.

I don’t think she was trying to be mean, but predictable is not something I wanted to hear. Because it’s everything I know I am and everything I feared I would grow up to be.

CHAPTER FOUR

CLARA

I probably shouldn’t have called my mother predictable last night, because this is the first time in a long time that I’ve woken up for school and didn’t find her in the kitchen cooking breakfast.

Maybe I should apologize, because I’m starving.

I find her in the living room, still in her pajamas, watching an episode of Real Housewives. “What’s for breakfast?”

“I didn’t feel like cooking. Eat a Pop-Tart.”

Definitely shouldn’t have called her predictable.

My father walks through the living room, straightening out his tie. He pauses when he sees my mother lying on the couch. “You feeling okay?”

My mother rolls her head so that she’s looking up at us from her comfy position on the couch. “I’m fine. I just didn’t feel like making breakfast.”

When she gives her attention back to the television, Dad and I look at each other. He raises a brow before walking over to her and pressing a quick kiss on her forehead. “See you tonight. Love you.”

“Love you too,” she says.

I follow my dad into the kitchen. I grab the Pop-Tarts and hand him one. “I think it’s my fault.”

“That she didn’t cook breakfast?”

I nod. “I told her she was predictable last night.”

Dad’s nose scrunches up. “Oh. Yeah, that wasn’t nice.”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way. She asked me to describe her using one word, and it’s the first thing that came to mind.”

He pours himself a cup of coffee and leans against the counter in thought. “I mean . . . you aren’t wrong. She does like routine.”

“Wakes up at six every morning. Breakfast is ready by seven.”

“Dinner at seven thirty every night,” he says.

“Rotating menu.”

“Gym at ten every morning.”

“Grocery shopping on Mondays,” I add.

“Sheets get washed every Wednesday.”

“See?” I say in defense. “She’s predictable. It’s more of a fact than an insult.”

“Well,” he says, “there was that one time we came home, and she’d left a note saying she went to the casino with Jenny.”

“I remember that. We thought she’d been kidnapped.”

We really did think that. It was so unlike her to take a spontaneous overnight trip without planning months in advance, so we called both of them just to make sure she was the one who wrote the note.

My father laughs as he pulls me in for a hug. I love his hugs. He wears the softest white button-up shirts to work, and sometimes when his arms are around me, it’s like being wrapped in a cozy blanket. Only that blanket smells of the outdoors, and it sometimes disciplines you. “I need to get going.” He releases me and pulls at my hair. “Have fun at school.”

“Have fun at work.”

I follow him out of the kitchen to find Mom no longer on the couch but standing in front of the television. She’s pointing the remote at the TV screen. “The cable just froze.”

“It’s probably the remote,” Dad says.

“Or the operator,” I say, taking the remote from my mother. She always hits the wrong button and can’t remember which one to press to get her back to her show. I hit all the buttons and nothing works, so I power everything off.

Aunt Jenny walks into the house as I’m attempting to power the television back on for my mother. “Knock, knock,” she says, swinging open the door. Dad helps her with Elijah’s car seat and an armful of stuff. I power the television back on, but it doesn’t do anything.

“I think it’s broken.”

“Oh, God,” my mother says, as if the idea of being home all day with an infant and no television is a nightmare of an existence.

Aunt Jenny hands my mother Elijah’s diaper bag. “You guys still have cable? No one has cable anymore.”

There’s only a year of age difference between Aunt Jenny and my mom, but sometimes it feels as though my mother is the parent of both of us.

“We try to tell her, but she insists on keeping it,” I say.

“I don’t want to watch my shows on an iPad,” my mother says in defense.

“We get Netflix on our television,” my father says. “You can still watch it on the television.”