I knew who she was waiting for.

We both knew.

She was waiting for the children who did not come — waiting the way she had waited all those years, out of a love that had never once been repaid in the same coin it was given.

I would step into the doorway myself, into the space where she was hoping to see them, and her eyes would move to me and soften, and something in her face would rearrange itself from hope into acceptance, and she would say my name.

And I would go to her, and it would be me, again, only me, always only me.