“So?”
“If she doesn’t see someone nearby, she panics.”
I frowned.
“Why your room?”
Mia hesitated.
“Because she thinks it’s hers.”
Kyle returned a moment later.
He looked exhausted.
Dark circles framed his eyes, his shirt was wrinkled, and his hair looked as though he hadn’t slept in days.
“When were you planning to tell me your mother came back?” I asked.
His shoulders sagged.
“I found out four days ago.”
“You found out?”
“I thought she left 30 years ago.”
I searched his face for any sign he was joking.
There wasn’t one.
“My father told me she walked out on us when I was six,” he said quietly.
“Last week the police found an elderly woman wandering outside a grocery store. Something in her purse eventually led them to me.”
I looked toward the hallway.
Gladys was humming softly inside Mia’s room.
“I didn’t recognize her,” Kyle said quietly. “Thirty years changes people. Mia had never seen her before.”
My mind raced.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I tried.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket.
The cracked screen lit up.
Five calls from him. All missed.
Three failed video calls.
Several unsent messages.
My delayed flights.
My conference schedule.
The overseas time difference.
None of it mattered.
He should have found a way.
“I wanted to,” he said. “But every hour I learned something that made even less sense.”
“What do you mean?”
Kyle swallowed.
“The woman I met isn’t the mother I grew up hating.”
Before I could answer, Gladys called from the bedroom.
“Kyle?” Her voice trembled. “I can’t find my little boy.”
Mia quietly stepped beside her.
“Grandma?”
Gladys looked at her.
“He’s safe,” Mia said softly. “He’s right here.”
Gladys’s breathing slowly steadied.
I finally understood why my daughter had chosen the kitchen floor.
Kyle hurried down the hallway.
I followed just far enough to see him kneel beside her.
“I’m right here, Mom.”
She cupped his face with trembling hands.
Then she whispered nine words that made every hair on my arms stand up.
“They told me you were better off without me.”
I stood frozen in the hallway.
Gladys gently stroked Kyle’s cheek.
“They said you were happier without me,” she whispered.
Kyle closed his eyes.
“I’m here now.”
She smiled.
For a moment, every line of worry disappeared from her face. Then she looked around the room, confused.
“Where’s my little boy?”
Kyle swallowed.
“I’m right here.”
She blinked.
“No,” she said softly. “He’s only six.”
She walked past him and sat on Mia’s bed. Within seconds, she drifted to sleep.
Kyle quietly closed the bedroom door. He rested his forehead against the door for a long moment. I noticed his shoulders start to tremble.
I had never seen my husband cry.
