The cool air of early Washington spring nibbled at Paige’s nose, but she paid it no mind. All her focus and attention were on the small backpack in her hands, as she went over its contents one last time. Everything had to be there. Nothing could be missing. She just needed to be sure.

“Mom, I’m gonna be late! Hurry up!”

Normally, Paige might rebuke her son for that tone. She’d raised him better than that, and at nine years old, he was usually a patient, kind, quiet boy. But this was no ordinary morning, and instead, she just muttered under her breath that she was trying to concentrate.

Everything was there. Of course it was. She’d packed it the day before and she’d rechecked it before they’d left the house this morning, but she couldn’t help the final check. It gave her one more precious moment with her son, before he left her for three whole days.

She could hear her mother’s voice in her head, laughingly calling her a helicopter mom, but she didn’t care. For nine years, Dylan had been her whole world. It had been just the two of them since the day he was born. She wouldn’t apologize for holding him close as he grew.

“Mommm, come on!”

But, of course, there’s always a time to let go.

“Okay, I think that’s everything,” she said, zipping up the backpack and holding it up. The young boy turned while she threaded his arms through the straps, cherishing the simple familiarity of the routine with a sentimentality as though he were going to be gone three months rather than three days.

“Now, you remember what I told you about calling me if you have any problems at all?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“And you have my number?”

“It’s on my phone, Mom.”

She resisted the urge to check to be sure the cheap cellphone she’d gotten him for emergencies was tucked away in the inside pocket of his backpack. She knew it was. She’d just seen it, for crying out loud!

She turned him around so that she could see his face, even as he strained his neck to look at where his fellow students were already boarding the bus.

“Okay, and you have your Aunt Hayley’s address written down, right? She lives there in Seattle. If worst comes to worst and you don’t have your phone, you can always get to her, you understand? Find a police officer, give them her address, and we’ll work it out from there.”

“Mommm, I knoooow.”

Of course he did. He was a smart kid, and a trip like this—venturing out into the wide world—was well overdue. He’d have a good time, she felt sure of it, even as she hated to see him go. But she had to, so she gave his arms one final, affectionate pat.

“Okay, then, go get on the bus with your friends! And don’t forget to have fun!”

It always came almost as a surprise to Paige how quickly Dylan could get his little arms around her neck, and how tightly his little muscles could hold her. And even after nine long years of single motherhood, the love she felt swell in her heart when he did so still caught her off guard.

“I will, Mom. Love you!”

“I love you, too, kiddo,” she said, doing her best not to cry. She would not be the mother who cried at the field trip drop-off.

And, just like that, she was watching his back as he ran off towards the bus. She sniffled a little. Sniffles didn’t count.

She could hear the background mumble of the other moms and dads commiserating with each other. No one approached her. That was the thing about always being in a hurry—eventually, people grew to expect that you couldn’t stay and talk and they didn’t try to get you to do so. And if there was one thing that had defined her life for the last nine years more than anything else, it was having too much to do and too little time to do it in.

Of course, that was all under the assumption that she had Dylan with her. As she got into her depressingly quiet car, she began to realize just how empty the next three days would be without him.

But that was all right. She’d planned for this. Over the last nine years, she’d gotten good at finding a way to plan ahead for everything. Her life didn’t really work unless she had it all planned out. And this even included how she would avoid facing the cold, empty house that she would be left with, now that Dylan was off on his three-day adventure.

Paige was going to have a date. An actual, real date, with dinner and wine and everything. It would the first one she’d ever been on, she realized with a start as she pulled out of the parking lot. Since Kyle, Dylan’s father, had left her pregnant and alone at nineteen, she had never gotten into the dating scene. She’d decided early on that Dylan would just be enough for her, at least for the foreseeable future.

But tonight, maybe all that was going to change. Paige felt her heartbeat rise at the thought.

She’d gotten serious with screening her potential online dates, and had been careful to weed out anyone that might not be worth the precious time she was giving him. The dating site she’d signed up for was the best reviewed one she could find, and she’d very carefully examined each of the matches as they’d come in. She’d been picky—too picky, her sister Hayley had said, on one of their phone calls—but she was glad of that pickiness, now. The man she had selected to be the first real first date of her adult life was just the sort of man she had been looking for, and she was excited to meet him.

Her mind idly went over the details of what she would wear as she maneuvered her car towards her daily destination. She wasn’t sure how she was going to focus on waitressing at the Coffee Cup in between worrying about Dylan and distracting herself with anticipation of her date tonight, but she would have to try. Money was tight. It always was.

As she walked in the front door of Stockton’s best (and only) locally-sourced, semi-gourmet, quick and friendly diner, she was distracted by a buzzing in her pocket. So much so, that she nearly ran into Alvin, head chef extraordinaire.

“Sorry, Alvin!” she said, stepping out of the way of the threshold to avoid any further collisions, even though there was no one else scheduled to work this early on a day in their least busy season.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, doll,” he said. And, in spite of the stressfulness of the day, and as much as she already missed Dylan, she smiled.

Alvin didn’t normally talk like that—like a character from a black and white movie—but he seemed to have a way of knowing when she could use a smile, and pulled the character out then. Maybe it was because she’d known the old man since she was a little girl that he could tell that a day was challenging, even just from the slightest run-in. But whatever the reason, she was grateful for it. It calmed her a bit, in the midst of the chaos.

But that was all undone when she saw that the buzzing she had felt was a notification from the dating app. Her heart leapt in her chest, which she took as a good sign that this date tonight was not, in fact, going to be a waste of time.

But her heart sank just as fast when she tapped through and saw the actual contents of the message.

“Gotta take a raincheck on tonight! Things at work are crazy. Still excited to meet you!”

Yeah, sure he was. So excited that he was putting her off to some undefined time in the future on the day of their first meeting. Those exclamation points aren’t fooling anyone, bud.

She tried to let the bitterness fade. She knew that, ordinarily, if she hadn’t just seen her son off into an uncertain world, she would think more charitably of him, and she did her best to be that person. Maybe it was a legitimate excuse, she granted. Maybe he meant it.

Still, it was a disappointment, and Paige regretted letting her hopes get raised as high as she had allowed them to get. And, more than anything, she regretted that her perfectly planned avoidance of her lonely, quiet house had fallen to pieces.

It was going to be a long, long three days.