Why has the narrator returned to her childhood home in the story "The Leap"?

The only explanation for her return home is in the following sentences:

Since my father's recent death, there is no one to read to her, which is why I returned, in fact, from my failed life where the land is flat. I came home to read to my mother, to read out loud, read long into the dark if I must, to read all night.

Obviously, she has come home in order to care for her mother since her father passed away.  However, there is another reason hidden subtlely in this passage.  The narrator says she is returning from her "failed life."  Some goals of the narrator's  have failed and she has come home as much for her mother's sake as for her own.