Book Description

When wildlife photographer Abbey Gallagher captures the tenderness between a protective mother gorilla and her newborn baby, she wonders if she can ever feel the same family bonds. First she has to shake loose the anger she carries toward her own mother. After she returns from Africa for her 30th birthday, her boyfriend Ryan cannot pry any commitment from her for their future together, despite her mother's playful, but pointed, urging and interference. Her mother's self-centered behavior drives the wedge between them even deeper, and Abbey retreats into her own defense mode: keep your life separate, don't share your feelings, retreat far away to another continent, refuse to make plans together, use people without letting them use you, stay detached, never say 'I love you'.But when her mother is diagnosed with cancer, Abbey postpones her return to Africa on assignment and offers begrudging assistance to lighten her father's caretaking load. One by one, the secret layers of her life as her mother's child are peeled away, until Abbey has no choice but to face a new and unsettling truth.Can she accept the changes in her relationship with her mother that arise as her health slips away? Can Abbey open herself to Ryan enough to repair their attachment and resume their romance, to make plans for a life together?Nothing seems possible until Abbey learns Ryan's childhood story of his yearning for a bike. Not just any bike. The red bike.