Sixteen Years I Didn’t Speak to My Mother. Then I Went Missing, and From Her Sickbed She Said “Go Find Her”

“Mom,” I said.

She began to cry.

“You’re alive.”

“I’m alive.”

“Why didn’t you turn the truck around,” she wept, “when you saw the road was bad?”

I laughed, through my own tears.

“Because apparently I’m still stubborn.”

A small wet sound came down the line that might have been a laugh.