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enough, or smart enough. At least, that was what Liz had heard. Maybe those hadn’t been the exact words he used, but those were what Liz heard. Once again, she hadn’t taken care of things—she had let things go, she hadn’t taken care of someone else’s needs, she had been boring and inattentive—and someone she loved had left her. Soon Peter was dating the big-boobed blond girl, who Liz imagined was never boring and always very attentive.
    After that, Liz moved back home, commuting her last two years of college. It was a good thing, too, as Mom was drinking more. Deanne and George tended to avoid and ignore Mom’s problem, but Liz did her best to intervene. If they didn’t take care of Mom, Liz argued, they’d lose her. Liz tried so hard to make things right for Mom. She took care of her mother through every one of her drinking binges, cleaning up the messes that she made, calling everyone Mom had offended and apologizing for her. When Mom finally got sober, after a long and agonizing ordeal, she said she owed her life to Liz. For once, Liz had done what she was supposed to do, and she had the results to show for it: she hadn’t lost her mother.
    But her mother became determined that she’d never lose Liz either. “I still need you, honey,” Mom had said when Liz had announced she was taking the job on the round-the-world cruise ship soon after her graduation from college. The idea of Liz being so far away for so long unnerved Mom—and it unnerved Liz, too, who worried Mom would backslide and start drinking. An email from Deanne, which Liz received somewhere off the coast of Iceland, confirmed Liz’s worst fears. Mom had indeed hit the sauce again. She’d wrecked the car. Liz blamed herself for going away, for not sticking around to keep Mom in line. See what happened when she didn’t do what she was supposed to do? Her guilt threatened to ruin the rest of the voyage for her.
    â€œBut baby,” Liz’s best friend, Nicki, counseled her, sitting on the upper deck under a full white moon as the ship sliced through the cold waters of the North Atlantic, “you can’t blame yourself. You can’t go on living your life for your mother. You have your own life to live! This cruise was a golden opportunity for you to see the world and to do what you love most—dance! You can’t go on being your mother’s keeper.”
    When Liz met David a short time later, she saw the wisdom of Nicki’s words. If she hadn’t taken the job on the ship, she never would have met David.
    And to her relief, Mom’s relapse didn’t last. With the help of her friends in AA, Mom had once again committed to sobriety, and Liz was proud of her. Still, she wondered, deep down, if she had been the cause of Mom falling off the wagon, and if without her around, the same thing might happen all over again.
    But she had hesitated only a moment when David had asked her to marry him and move with him to Florida. Nicki’s words came back to her. You can’t go on living your life for your mother. An amazing man had just asked Liz to marry him. He was kind and decent and extraordinarily wealthy. She said yes gladly.
    Take that, Peter Mather!
    Mom hadn’t been happy when she learned that Liz had eloped. She was furious, in fact. But what upset her more was that Liz was moving permanently so far away from her. At least before, her mother had consoled herself that the cruise ship gig would eventually end. Now Liz was taking up residence more than a thousand miles away. Liz had tried assuring her mother that if she ever needed her, she would come to her. David could afford to fly her anywhere at any time. But Mom was still brooding about it. There was an edge to her voice every time Liz called her. Liz constantly worried her mother would start drinking again.
    Liz had rocked the boat, quite literally, by going off on the cruise, and Mom had suffered.