For 4 years my parents told everyone I "disappeared" after I stopped sending money home.

Pastor Elkins gave a shorter sermon than usual that morning.

He was a perceptive man.

He read the room.

The congregation sang.

The collection plate went around.

Mrs.

Alderman's choir performed the same anthem they performed every Homecoming, slightly off-tempo on the second verse as always.

My mother sat in her usual pew.

She did not stand beside me at the front.

She did not make an announcement about her lost daughter coming home.

She sat, and she was quiet, and that was its own kind of statement to everyone who had been watching from the steps.

Patricia sat three rows behind her.

I had found her in the corridor before the service started and asked if she still wanted to come in.

She had looked at me for a moment and said, "I've been wanting to walk into this church my whole life." So she walked in.

My father saw her from across the aisle and nodded once.

She nodded back.

That was all, for now.

But it was something.

Lily fell asleep against June's arm during the second hymn.

---

After the service, people gathered in the fellowship hall for coffee and the potluck dishes that appeared every Homecoming without anyone needing to organize them.

I stood near the door with a cup of coffee I wasn't drinking, and people came to me one by one.

Some of them said they were glad I was back.

Some of them said they'd always wondered.

Mrs.

Alderman held my face in both her hands and said, "We missed you, baby," and I had to look at the ceiling for a moment.

My aunt Carol found Patricia by the coffee urn and introduced herself.

I watched from across the room.

It was awkward and careful and neither of them smiled much, but they talked for almost ten minutes, which was more than I had expected.

Danny appeared at my elbow with a plate of something covered in cream of mushroom soup.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"I don't know yet," I said.

"Ask me in a week."

"Fair." He ate something off the plate.

"Mom asked me if you were staying in Ohio."

"What did you tell her?"

"I said I didn't know.

Which is true."

"I'm not staying," I said.

"Not right now.

I need to go home.

I need to go back to Asheville and go to work and put Lily in her own bed and think about what I actually want."

"And then?"

"And then I'll decide what kind of relationship is possible.

With her.

With Dad.

With all of it." I looked across the room at my mother, who was standing near the window talking to Pastor Elkins with her hands folded and her chin slightly raised.

"She's going to need to talk to people.

Tell them the truth.

Not a version of it.

The actual truth."

"She won't want to."

"I know.

But that's the condition."

Danny was quiet for a moment.

"She did love you, Tori.

In her way.

I know that doesn't fix anything."

"No," I said.

"It doesn't."

"But it's true."

I looked at him — my little brother in his delivery-company polo turned church clothes, who had driven seven hours to knock on a blue door and had not been able to finish a sentence on the phone because he was too shaken to speak.

Who had sat at my kitchen table for two hours and asked about Caleb.

Who had found the notebook and brought it to a motel room and placed it on the desk without knowing exactly what it would set in motion.

"You asked about Caleb," I said.

"When you came to Asheville.

You were the first person in my family who ever asked about him."

Danny looked at his plate.

"I should have asked sooner," he said.

"Yes.

But you asked."

He nodded.

"That matters," I said.

---

I found Patricia near the exit, coat already on, the thank-you gift bag still in her hand.

She had not given it to my mother.

"Are you heading out?" I asked.

"Long drive back," she said.

"I'm in Columbus now."

"I didn't know that."

"There's a lot we don't know about each other." She said it without bitterness.

Just fact.

"I'd like to change that," I said.

"If you're open to it.

Slowly.

No pressure."

She looked at me for a moment.

"Your daughter held my hand during the last hymn," she said.

"She just reached over and took it.

She didn't even look at me when she did it."

"She does that," I said.

"She's very confident about who she likes."

Patricia smiled.

It was a small smile, careful at the edges, but it was real.

"I'll think about it," she said.

"That's all I'm asking."

She went out the door.

I stood in the fellowship hall with my cold coffee and watched the room — June laughing at something Mrs.

Alderman said, my father crouched down talking to Lily at her eye level, my mother still by the window, no longer talking to the pastor, just looking out at the parking lot with an expression I couldn't read from across the room.

Lily saw me watching and waved.

I waved back.

---

We left Ohio on a Monday morning.

June stood on her porch in her housecoat and watched us back out of the driveway.

Lily waved from the car window until we turned the corner and June disappeared from view.

Three hours into the drive, Lily fell asleep.

I drove through the mountains with the radio off.

Somewhere in Virginia, my phone lit up on the passenger seat.

I glanced at it at a red light.

A text from a number I had just added to my contacts the night before.

*Patricia Holt: Safe drive home.