There she was. The lady who had always been my mother. Exactly the same.

Except, wearing an eye patch.

It was so strange to see anyone in an eye patch, let alone my own mother. Then there was the patch itself, homemade out of blue calico fabric with flowers—which was even more off-putting than the fact of it in the first place. Who had a homemade eye patch?

That had to be the eye with the mysterious ’oma, of course. The sight of the patch made her situation—and by extension mine—seem real for the first time.

It also made her seem a little larger than life.

Or maybe that was just her.

I reminded myself again that she was only Diana. Of course, our parents get an extra dose of importance in our minds. When we’re little, they’re everything—the gods and goddesses that rule our worlds. It takes a lot of growing up, and a lot of disappointment, to accept that they’re just normal, bumbling, mistaken humans, like everybody else.

Her hair was grayer now, and she wore it in a short bob that curled forward under her ears. She’d never been a big one for makeup. She wore the same canvas apron she’d always worn, with a lifetime’s worth of smears and drips of glaze on it in every color known to nature, over wide-leg linen pants and a linen shirt that were both somehow the exact right ratio of wrinkled to pressed.

I’d forgotten how beautiful she was. I could say that without softening toward her, couldn’t I? That was just a cold fact. She was beautiful.

But also, for the first time in my life, I thought she looked old.

She tried to step toward me, but she stumbled over a corner of the welcome mat and had to bend down to study the two steps down to the sidewalk.

By the time we reached each other, the resentment I’d been feeling had mixed with so many other feelings and impulses—sorrow, regret, loneliness, protectiveness, admiration, affection—that it became something else completely.

Complicated.

She moved in for a hug in slo-mo. I saw her lean in, and I thought, Don’t hug me. Don’t hug me.

Then she hugged me.

I stepped back when she released me.

“You made it,” she said then, raising her one good eye to take me in.

“Nice eye patch,” I said.

She touched it, like she’d forgotten it was there, then smiled as if I’d embarrassed her. “A friend made it for me,” she said. Her fingernails had clay under them, as always, and she had a paintbrush tucked behind her ear.

“You found your way okay?” she asked.

“I always do.”

“Thank you for coming, Cassie.”

I shrugged. “There wasn’t really a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” she said. She half-turned to lead me inside. “Can I help you with your bag?”

The idea was almost funny, as I watched her work her way back up the two little steps. “I don’t think you can,” I said.

Inside, the house was tiny—and not just because everything’s bigger in Texas.

Just past the door was a living room barely big enough for a love seat and two chairs in front of a stone hearth. Beyond that was a kitchen area with a farmhouse table. That was it. Past the kitchen door, out back, I could see a garden, and beyond that, the water. From the living room, a crooked little eighteenth-century staircase crossed in front of a window, up to the second floor. There didn’t seem to be a right angle in the whole place, and the wind outside made the house creak like a ship.

“This place is like a dollhouse,” I said.

She smiled like I’d offered a compliment. “Isn’t it?”

Nothing about any of this felt real. I felt like a live person who’d just showed up in a Disney cartoon.

Yet here I was.

“Can I fix you a snack?” she asked, almost like I was a kid just home from school. She assessed my state. “Or get you a drink? Or would you rather just unload your things and get settled?”

No, she could not fix me a snack. What was I, twelve? “I’ll take my stuff up,” I said.

“My bedroom and studio are the next floor up,” she said, “and the whole attic is yours. It has its own bath, so you’ll have everything you need.”

“Is it always this windy?” I asked.

“Always,” Diana said, like it was a selling point. “Because we’re out here on the jetty. We’re not just near the water, we’re on it.”

I looked around. “This place must be two hundred years old.”

She nodded. “Two hundred and fifty. A fisherman named Samuel McKee built it. He and his wife, Chastity, raised eight children here.”

“There’s some irony there.”

“There are stains on the kitchen floor where they used to pickle the fish.”

Off to the side was a porch the length of the building that Diana used for a pottery studio and shop. She had made up a profession for herself: She was a dishmaker. It wasn’t a real category, and I’d spent my life explaining it when people said, “Huh?” But here in the house, it seemed plenty real. She made dishes and cups and saucers—threw them on the ceramics wheel, then hand-painted them with glaze and fired them. She specialized in gardens and animals, bright colors and polka dots. She made whole sets. And the shop was bright and cheery like the dishes. She sold other fun kitchen items to round out the selection—tea towels and aprons and napkins—all in charming patterns and fabrics.

“It’s a terrible living,” she told me once, “but it’s fun.”

I could tell it was fun. Just from looking.

“How did you find this place?”

“Oh,” she said, glancing out the window, “it belonged to Wallace.”

Wallace was the man she’d left my father for. The cheater. We didn’t talk about him. “He gave it to you?”

“Left it to me,” she said, nodding. “After he died.”

A pause. I’d never met Wallace. I knew about him, but I’d refused to meet him in the same way I’d refused to visit Rockport. I’d blamed him. I’d been angry. I’d been far too absorbed in the pain he caused me—and my dad—to see Wallace as anything other than the source of all my problems. Now, of course, it was too late. He’d died when I was in college.

“It’ll be yours one day,” my mom added then.

“I don’t want it,” I said, too quickly. She couldn’t just make me move here and then give me a house.

She blinked. “Oh, well, that’s okay. But I’ll leave it to you anyway. In my will. You can sell it, of course, if you want.”

“You don’t have to leave it to me.”

“Who else would I possibly leave it to?”

“Let’s not talk about it.”

“No. I agree. Hardly our first order of business.”

I looked around the room.

“I’m so grateful to you for coming,” she said after a minute. “I know you gave up a lot to be here.”

There it was again. That magic she had for draining my anger: her gratitude, her sympathy. She didn’t make things easy. With my dad, things were always simple. He was dedicated, true-blue, kindhearted, and tough. You knew exactly where you stood with him, always. No layers of conflicting feelings to sort through. He was just a good guy, plain and easy.