said.

“Yourself.

But honest this time.”

We did take the train trip, though not the way it had first been planned.

It was October, and the mountains wore early snow.

I booked two seats: one for Sophie and one for me.

Caleb drove us to the station before dawn.

He carried our bags, bought us coffee, and stood on the platform with his hands in his jacket pockets looking nervous.

Sophie hugged him.

Then she climbed aboard to find our seats.

Caleb turned to me.

“Thank you for taking her.”

“I’m taking myself too,” I said.

He smiled sadly.

“I know.”

The conductor called for boarding.

Caleb hesitated, then reached into his coat and handed me a small brass compass.

Daniel’s compass.

“I found it in the toolbox,” he said.

“I thought you should have it.”

I closed my fingers around it.

The metal was scratched, warm from his hand.

“Your father used to say a compass doesn’t stop you from getting lost,” I said.

“It just tells you when you are.”

Caleb’s eyes filled.

“I’ve been lost a long time, Mom.”

“I know.”

“I’m trying to come back.”

I looked at my son, not as the boy I had raised, not as the man who had failed me, but as someone standing at the beginning of a harder road.

Love did not require me to carry him down it.

Love only allowed me to hope he kept walking.

“Then keep trying,” I said.

On the train, Sophie pressed her face to the window as the city fell away and the mountains rose in the distance.

She had saved the seat beside her with Daniel’s scarf folded across it.

“Grandma,” she said, patting the cushion, “you sit by me.”

I sat.

Outside, dawn broke over the peaks, turning the snow gold.

I held Daniel’s compass in one hand and Sophie’s warm fingers in the other.

For the first time in years, I did not feel needed.

I felt chosen.

And that was better.