“What?”
“Maybe Mom loved us.”
He swallowed.
“And maybe she still made a bad choice.”
Nobody spoke.
Leo picked up the letter addressed to his eighteenth birthday.
“Can I read this one?”
I nodded.
His hands were shaking as he opened it.
He read silently for several minutes.
Then he stopped.
His eyes widened.
He looked at Mrs. Johnson.
“You didn’t tell him?”
She shook her head.
“That part was yours to decide.”
“What part?” I demanded.
Leo looked at me.
And suddenly he was crying.
“She’s here.”
I thought I’d misheard him.
“What?”
“Mom.”
Leo looked toward the front door.
“She’s here.”
Part 7 — Eighteen Years Later
Nobody moved.
I stared at the door.
My heart pounded so violently that my hands went numb.
“Here where?”
Mrs. Johnson answered.
“Across the street.”
I stood.
Then sat down again.
Then stood.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
Open the door?
Lock it?
Yell?
Cry?
Leo looked terrified.
Not of her.
Of me.
That realization changed everything.
This wasn’t only my moment.
It was his.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
Leo wiped his face.
“I want to see her.”
That was enough.
I opened the door.
For a few seconds, there was nobody there.
Then a woman stepped from beneath the streetlight across the road.
She was fifty now.
Her brown hair had streaks of gray.
She was thinner.
Older.
But I knew the way she held her hands together when she was nervous.
Goldi.
She stopped at the edge of our driveway.
She didn’t come closer.
She looked at me first.
Then she saw Leo behind me.
Her face changed.
I’ve never seen grief and joy collide in a human face like that.
She covered her mouth.
