Chapter 10 - THEY CAME BACK IN THE RAIN
It was October.
Heavy rain against the windows.
I was carrying boxes of canned vegetables toward the parish hall when three people entered.
My body recognized them before my mind did.
My mother.
Older.
Smaller.
Gray threaded through her hair.
My father.
Thicker around the middle.
Deep lines around his mouth.
And Leo.
No longer eight.
Twenty-eight.
Tall.
His face had changed most.
His eyes had not.
The box slipped in my hands.
My mother began crying immediately.
“Nora.”
I did not move.
She rushed forward.
“We found you.”
I almost laughed.
They knew exactly where they had left me.
Then she reached for my hands.
I stepped back.
She stopped.
“We’re your family.”
Her voice broke.
“We’ve come to take you home.”
I was twenty-four.
I had a job.
An apartment.
A mother.
The sentence was so absurd that for several seconds I could not answer.
Then I remembered Florence once telling me:
Not everyone comes back because they love you.
Sometimes they come back because they need something.
I looked at all three of them.
“What do you need?”
The crying stopped.
May you like
Not completely.
Enough.
