It made me happy to know that most of my friends and relatives thought that Alice’s vacation was a good idea. I’d had a lingering worry that they might look down on her for leaving, but no one seemed to. I didn’t talk about it much since I felt it was Alice’s business and no one else’s, and the others seemed to share my feelings on that. During the time she was gone, no one even mentioned it.

No one, that is, except Lenore. She’d come to LA to see Kallie, and on hearing that Alice was out of town for awhile, Lenore had asked me question after question about how her daughter could leave in the middle of a family crisis.

“She just needed some space,” I told her the morning after she’d arrived. She was staying in the guest room, presumably for a few days, in order to spend time with Kallie after hearing what had happened. She was obviously well meaning and didn’t say anything bad, but her questions about Alice’s actions were getting to me. Finally, when Kallie went down for her nap on the afternoon of the second day, I tried to explain.

“Watching Kallie get so sick was very hard for Alice,” I told her as gently as I could. “She feels very guilty about what happened, and she was too close to the situation. So I suggested that she take this vacation to get a little distance from what happened.”

Lenore appeared to be trying to understand, but eventually she just shook her head. “I just can’t imagine leaving my family alone after something like this, but I suppose if she needed to do it, she needed to do it. As long as Kallie’s all right and you’re doing all right yourself, I guess I don’t really need to understand it. I just hope she’s okay.”

“She will be. She’s still kinda working through things from before, but she’ll be fine,” I assured Lenore. I was really happy when she said she’d come back once Alice had been home for a few days, and they’d go out to lunch. I knew Alice loved her mom, but in the past it had been really hard for them to connect, and I hoped this might be the start of something good.