I find out where Mama lives from a location Lilia mentioned once without thinking about it.

  I get on a bus one afternoon and I go.

  This time there’s no rehearsed speech. I’ve absorbed the oh now. I’ve lived with it for months. I’m still coming because I ran out of reasons not to.

  I find the house. It’s warm looking. Window boxes. The kind of house that someone put real thought into.

  I knock.

  She opens the door.

  This time she knows my face immediately. She says my name, quietly, and the sound of it undoes something in my chest.

  “Hi,” I say.

  She steps outside instead of opening the door wider, pulling it almost closed behind her. She’s not unkind. Her face is careful and genuinely sorry in a way I believe.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” I say. “Properly. If that’s okay.”

  She looks at me for a moment. Then she nods.

  “Okay,” she says.

  We stand on the front step.

  “I’m sorry,” she says first. “The last time. The way I handled it.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not really.”

  “No,” I say. “But I understand it.”

  She looks at the street for a second. “You shouldn’t have to understand it.”

  “Maybe not.” I look at her. “Are you happy? That’s all I actually want to know.”

  She’s quiet. Then: “Yes.”

  She means it. The yes is full and real and built out of years of difficult work. I can hear all of that in one word.

  It’s the best thing I’ve heard in a long time.

  It’s also the thing that tells me the door isn’t opening today.

  “Good,” I say. “That’s good. That’s all I needed.”

  Her face does something she doesn’t manage in time.

  “Elise—”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m not asking for anything. I just needed to hear your voice and know you were okay.”

  We look at each other. All the years between us standing right there on a front step in the afternoon.

  “I’m going to go,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says softly.

  I take a step back. Then another.

  “It was good to see you,” I say. “Really.”

  I turn and I walk down the path and I don’t look back.

  On the bus home I stare out the window the whole way.

  She’s happy, I think. She built something real.

  That should be enough.

  I try to make it enough.