When I Was Four, My Mother Left Me Alone in a Church—Twenty Years Later She Returned Crying, “We Need You”

“Would you like me to be your mother legally too?”

I stared at her.

“Aren’t you already?”

Florence cried so hard she had to remove her glasses.

I became Nora Miller.

Not because my earlier life disappeared.

Because somebody had stayed long enough to give me a new legal one.

PART 7 — THE CHURCH

Strangely, I never hated Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Florence played piano there.