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we ever going to spend an entire week together without driving each other crazy? We have such different lifestyles. Ours is beyond hectic, and theirs is . . .
    Well . . . low-key is a nice way to put it. And these days, as far as Allison’s concerned, low-key has a certain appeal.
    Even dull has a certain appeal, in the wake of all they’ve been through.
    After assuring Cindy-Lou that she isn’t interrupting a meal, Allison asks how the kids are, how Brett is, how the farm is.
    And this time, when her sister-in-law tells her how much her own children would love it—a real live farm!—Allison not only agrees, sincerely, but asks when would be a good time to visit.
    â€œOh, gosh, anytime!” Cindy-Lou sounds so thrilled that Allison feels as though she’s just been heartily hugged. “Are you really going to come out?”
    â€œWe’d like to,” Allison tells her, and she means it.
    Mack was right. It’s time to get together with the only family she has left.
    â€œYou’re always telling the girls to be good to each other and J.J., and that siblings are best friends,” he pointed out when they were discussing it. “Don’t you want them to at least see you and your brother in the same room? In this lifetime?”
    Of course she does.
    Not only that . . .
    And not that she’d ever admit it to Mack . . .
    But all last fall, when she was feeling overwhelmed by the fast-paced world in which she’d chosen to raise her children, she found herself fantasizing about the one she’d left behind—the last thing she’d ever imagined doing.
    No, she doesn’t really want to live in her small Nebraska hometown again. But at least now she grasps that it couldn’t have been all bad. She just had so many unpleasant memories associated with her deadbeat father and her suicidal mother.
    Then there was Brett, born to an unwed, teenage Brenda a decade before Allison came along. He grew up fast, married young, and moved away. She can’t really remember a time when he was truly a part of her life.
    But that doesn’t mean he can’t be, going forward. She wants to see him again, and Cindy-Lou, too, and get to know the niece and nephew she’s met only once before.
    â€œWhen can you come, Allison?”
    â€œWell, the kids finish school at the end of June”—she thrusts the tray of chicken nuggets into the preheated oven—“and Mack has always taken off work the week of the Fourth of July, so—”
    â€œThat’s great! I’ll mark the calendar!”
    â€œWait! I have to check with Mack first,” Allison cautions. “Last year, he didn’t even get a vacation because he’d just been promoted.”
    â€œWhat? That’s terrible!” says Cindy-Lou, who’s probably never gotten a vacation—a true one—in her entire adult life. Or perhaps even her childhood, considering that she was raised on the farm, and her parents were just as saddled to it as she and Brett are.
    Growing up, Allison couldn’t imagine choosing to spend every day from birth to death with the same roof over your head, the same view out your windows, the same people coming and going, day in and day out . . .
    That’s part of the reason she left.
    And it was the right decision, she reminds herself, closing the oven door. Of course it was.
    â€œIf you can stay here until the middle of July,” Cindy-Lou says, “we can celebrate your birthday together. It’s the twelfth, isn’t it?”
    Allison is touched that she remembers, and even more touched when she promises to bake a big chocolate birthday cake. “And we can all go to the county fair that week, too. Your kids would love it.”
    â€œI’m sure they would.” Allison thinks of the carnival rides and games on the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore, bleak and deserted in November, on that