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Friday? Love you.”
    I hung up the phone, disappointed, and turned onto the street. Blinker on, I maneuvered through traffic.
    The voice in my mind nudged me. Go see your mother.
    Fine. I shook my head, straightened my shoulders, and focused on being more positive. It was silly, the insecurity that I tried so hard to keep under wraps.
    The anxiety stemmed from a childhood with my super-connected, over-achiever mother who boasted a stable of famous friends. Other mothers in the grocery store would practically climb over their shopping carts to speak to her and catch up on the latest celebrity gossip.
    My traumatic high school days didn’t help. I was the brainy teen with silver braces who loved hanging out at the library on weekends with other straight-A kids. I read stacks of novels, wrote bad poetry, and spent my days imagining that my “real” family—European royalty, of course—would someday swoop in and rescue me.
    When that didn’t happen, I went off to college. I joined the journalism club, pledged a sorority, and dreamed about backpacking in Europe over the summer. My senior year, I met Chris. After much convincing, I agreed to dinner. We saw each other the next night, and the next.
    We became inseparable. Chris and Melissa. Melissa and Chris.
    My friends began taping signs on my apartment door with my photo and ‘MIA’ written underneath.
    A month later, we moved in together.
    Everything was perfect until, one day, Chris overheard me arguing with my mother. She was pressing me for details. I wasn’t talking. She was jet-lagged. We both were irritable and exhausted. Finally, I gave in.
    “Of course, we’re going to get engaged,” I insisted. “We’ll graduate, get married, and he’ll go with me to Europe.”
    That was that, or so I thought. We finished the conversation, I hung up the phone. Three seconds later, my now-irate boyfriend came around the corner to confront me in the kitchen.
    “Doesn’t it matter what I want?” Chris asked, raising his voice.
    Taken aback, I tried to soothe his hurt feelings. “Of course,” I stuttered. “You want to run your own business—a finance and investment firm. And I totally support that.”
    But Chris wasn’t done talking. He didn’t appreciate my assumptions, didn’t know if he should or could pursue finance and investment banking in Europe, and besides, he wasn’t quite ready for marriage and kids.
    This time, I was the one left stunned.
    Chris packed his bags; we spent the semester break apart. I cried most of December while he dated someone from the past, the daughter of his parents’ friends. Her family was wealthy and politically connected. They owned a yacht, a Rolls Royce, and a small island in the Caribbean.
    Meanwhile, everything about me was just vanilla. Normal.
    How could I compete?
    But, when Chris came back the last semester of our senior year, he was furious with his parents. They’d tried to force him into proposing to his old girlfriend. He’d broken off the relationship instead.
    He apologized profusely and sent flowers. It took about a week for me to forgive him.
    Later, when his parents didn’t show up for our engagement party, Chris explained they’d had another falling out. I didn’t press him to explain. Deep down, I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to know.
      When I found out I was pregnant, I tried my best to quit worrying that Chris might change his mind or leave me behind again, like a child who forgets about a broken toy. We were together. We were happy. And sure, we had to put our dreams aside, get jobs, and pay the bills, but it was temporary.
    Somehow, though, temporary had turned into nearly two decades.
    I was thirty-nine and Chris had just turned forty. My mother was nearly eighty. It hardly seemed possible.
    My mind wandered as I swept through the double doors into the lobby of Magnolia Woods, determined to have a pleasant visit with my mother.
    If she was feeling well, I could tell her about my award. Mother