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

“Then she’s a girl,” my mother declared, “because the women in this family are born angry,” and we both laughed until we cried again.

That evening we sat out on the porch and watched the light go down over the road she’d been watching for a week.

She told me Mrs.

Collins had dragged an old crib out of storage.

“A crib?” “The one you slept in, as a baby.” I swallowed hard.

“I thought you’d have thrown that out years ago.” “I almost did,” she said.

“Many times.” “Why didn’t you?” She looked out at the road a long moment.