A lot of them tried real hard to last as long as they could, and Toby could see this. His dad had money. He was a decent-looking guy. And he had that low voice Toby had overheard one of his father’s girlfriends say was “sexy.”

Lance Gamble was a catch.

A lot of them tried to get to Lance through his sons.

Most of the time it was sickening, and it bugged the crap out of Toby and Johnny (it was just that Johnny was the kind of guy who’d learned to keep his mouth shut about stuff that bothered him or find a time he could talk it out with Dad so it wouldn’t tick Dad off, Toby . . . not so much).

But Rachel was real. She was pretty and she was sweet. She didn’t give off that fake vibe.

And she cooked awesome.

He’d wanted her to stick around.

Apparently she wasn’t going to do that, and as usual with his dad and his girlfriends, that was not her choice.

“If that woman ever came back, I’d slap her right across the face,” Toby heard Margot go on. “That is, before I tore her hair out, scratched out her eyes and ran her right back out of town on a rail.”

Now Margot was talking about Sierra.

Dad’s wife.

Johnny and Toby’s mom.

She was still his dad’s wife, as far as Toby knew.

Even though his dad tried to hide it from the boys, he’d tried to find her, but she was nowhere to be found. A couple of years ago, when an effort at this had failed, Toby had heard Dave suggest he get an ex parte divorce (whatever that was). But his dad had said, “Just gonna give her more time. If I know my Sierra, she won’t be able to stay away from her boys for too long.”

He was wrong, seeing as she’d stayed away by that time for eight years.

Toby still didn’t think his mother needed more time. She’d had enough time. Now it had been ten years.

She hadn’t come back.

Because she wasn’t gonna come back.

And if she did, no one wanted her back.

Except his dad.

And Toby.

He didn’t remember a lot about her. He’d been too young when she’d gone.

Except he remembered her being pretty. He remembered her smelling good.

He remembered how happy she made his dad.

Though Toby wasn’t feeling that so much anymore.

Mostly in this moment because he liked Rachel.

“I don’t know,” Margot was saying. “David will talk to him, I’m sure. But he won’t listen. I think he thinks he has to be available when she comes home. But that woman is never coming home. Dave knows it. I know it. The whole town of Matlock knows it.”

As Toby had noted, he knew it too.

“No,” Margot snapped. “I can’t even begin to understand what was in her head. But I’ll tell you this, we’re all having the last laugh.”

Toby straightened after she said this.

How were they all having the last laugh when his mom had up and left them?

Margot told him.

Well, not him. Whoever she was talking to.

“Johnathon is fifteen and he’s already one of the finest men I know. Good. Decent. Kind-hearted. Strong. Knows his own mind and how to speak it. Sharp as a whip. And she’ll never know what a fabulous man her boy turned out to be.”

Yeah.

Well, sure.

Johnny was awesome.

Everyone knew Johnny was awesome.

Everybody.

Even Toby, and sometimes Tobe wanted to hate his big brother, but Johnny was just that guy.

You couldn’t.

No one could hate Johnny Gamble.

“And Tobias . . .”

Toby perked up.

“He has no idea his potential . . .”

Right.

His potential.

“But when he learns . . .” she trailed off for a sec before she carried on. “I find myself struggling with him. Do you rein in all that audacity? Is it right to try to stop a boy from devouring life? He’s so bold, Judy, it sometimes takes my breath away. In another time, he’d be the first to walk on the moon. The first to corral fire. Johnathon will find a sweet girl, make babies with her, work in his father’s garages and live a good life, quiet and happy. Tobias will find a spitfire who challenges him and drives him insane, and they’ll go off and tear through the world, running with the bulls in Pamplona or uncovering hidden treasures in Egypt or something.”

Toby blinked in the sun.

Margot thought all that?

About him?

“And then what do I do?” Margot asked her friend Judy (who did not make cookies as good as Margot’s, but they were all right). “My last, not born of me, but my last boy? How does a woman handle her baby trekking through the Amazon or deep-sea diving to explore sunken pirate ships? I fear I’ll spend the rest of my life waiting for the phone to ring just to hear he’s all right. Lord, I hope he finds a woman who can communicate. At least she’ll check in.”

Without him telling it to do it, Toby’s body slid down the siding of Dave and Margot’s house.

All the way down.

Until he hit his rump.

Because she thought all that.

About him.

“And Sierra doesn’t get that,” she continued. “She doesn’t get the solidness of Johnathon or the fearlessness of Tobias. She’ll never know that. She’ll never hold the grandchildren Johnathon will give her in her arms. She’ll never hear the breathless excitement of Tobias’s children over the phone when they call and share what their father’s up to now.”

Toby felt something hit his stomach, and it wasn’t what usually hit it whenever anyone mentioned his mom.

It was something a whole lot different.

“So I suppose I should thank her,” Margot declared. “Because she left and I got all that. She left and that became mine. And I suppose I shouldn’t be angry with Lance for breaking it off with Rachel. Because if he found a woman, she might claim those boys. Because what woman, outside Sierra, who’s no woman at all, wouldn’t claim those boys? And then where would I be?”

Again, without him telling it to do it, his body got off its rear, took its feet and turned right to the screen door.

Margot never missed a trick.

So even though she was standing at the kitchen counter with the wall phone, with its long cord, held to her ear, her side to the door, she sensed him and turned.

Toby didn’t move.

He just stared at her with her pretty light-red hair and her big eyes, wearing one of her nice dresses (she was always in nice dresses) and he felt that feeling in his stomach.

“I have to go, Judy. Tobias is home from school and if I don’t get him an after-school snack, his stomach will eat through him.” She paused. “Okay. Yes, of course. See you then. Ta, Judy.”

With that, she hung up the phone.

But all Toby could think was she’d said he was “home.”

And he was.

He had three homes.

His dad’s.

His Grams and Gramps’s.

And Margot’s.

And she’d make him a heckuva after-school snack.

She always did.

Anytime he came to her for as long as he could remember.

His mom gave him that. All of that.

And she did it by leaving.

Unmoving, he watched her walk to him.

He only shifted when she pushed out the screen door.

She held it open, stood in the door and studied him.