Your mother's flight from Albany gets in at four-twelve. You drive back to DIA in your father's Subaru with the seat still set to his lumbar. You did not fix it on the Saturday morning errand. You do not fix it now. You pay seven dollars to park for forty-five minutes in the short-term cell-phone lot and you wait for her text.
The text comes at four-twenty-seven: Got the bag. East side. Under the sign.
You drive around to the East Side arrivals and you pull up at curb-zone-three where a white-haired man in a reflective vest is waving cars along, and your mother is on the curb under the sign that says ARRIVING PASSENGERS — 2 MINUTES LOADING ONLY.
She has one rolling carry-on, a tote bag, and a black coat with a scarf. She has the scarf wrapped once and tucked in, the way she wraps scarves.
You get out. You hug her. She is smaller than the last time you hugged her. You are twenty-three now and she is sixty-four. Her hair is shorter than when you left for Istanbul. She says you look tired. You say you look rested. Neither of you is lying and neither of you is telling the full truth.
Trunk? she says.
Back seat. Trunk's got groceries.
OK.
You put the carry-on on the back seat next to the grocery bags. She gets in the passenger side. You get in the driver side. The white-haired man waves you along. You pull out of the curb-zone and merge onto Peña going south.
Your father's car?
Yes.
He's home?
Garage.
OK.
She has the tote on her lap. Inside the tote is a small Mason jar with a faded handwritten label. You see it because she takes it out and sets it between her feet on the floormat, not because she shows it to you. The label says sour cherry, 2018, O.T. in the handwriting of your grandmother who is dead. Your mother has carried it from Albany in a padded tote.
You do not ask her why she has brought the jar. She does not say.
She tells you about the flight without telling you anything — the guy across the aisle who had a small dog, the beverage cart that ran out of tomato juice before it got to her, the quick look down at the Great Lakes that she caught through a break in the clouds. You make the noises. The Subaru hums on Peña. A small bird flies up from the shoulder of the road and over the hood of the car and away.
At Tower Road she says: The Subaru smells like your father.
You say: Yes.
He still driving with the seat back like this?
Yes.
OK.
She is my mother. She is Charlotte's grandmother by a route that went around the long way. She is Oksana's only daughter and she has carried her mother's jar on a plane from Albany at sixty-four without anybody asking her to. She is the librarian.
You drive and you do not say that.
The mountains come up at about I-225 the way they do. She looks at them. She says nothing about them.
At the house, your father comes out of the garage wiping his hands on a rag and he walks to the car and he opens her door for her and he does not hug her and she does not hug him and they nod at each other and he takes the carry-on and the tote. Charlotte is on the front steps in her unicorn sweater.
Grandma.
Charlotte.
Charlotte comes down the steps this time. She walks the four steps and she stops one foot away from your mother and she puts her hands behind her back and she looks up at her. Your mother smiles in the specific way she smiles at Charlotte.
You got tall.
I know.
Your mother kneels and hugs her. Charlotte hugs back.
Your father goes in with the carry-on. Karen is at the front door now, in a cardigan, with flour on one wrist from the baking she had been finishing at the counter when Charlotte ran to the steps, and she nods at your mother, and your mother nods at Karen, and the four women of the house — you, your mother, Karen, and Charlotte — are briefly all on the front porch in the late-afternoon Colorado light while your father disappears into the mudroom with the bag. You all go inside.