Leaving that café while knowing Nora was alive inside it was one of the hardest things I had ever done.
Back at the hotel, Michael cried.
I had seen my husband cry before.
Never like that.
“What if she disappears again?”
“She won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
So we waited.
At seven that evening, my phone rang.
Elaine.
“She wants to see you.”
Twenty minutes later, Michael and I were sitting in a quiet room behind the café.
Then the door opened.
Nora walked in.
For several seconds, none of us moved.
She looked at me.
Then at Michael.
Her face crumpled.
“I’m sorry.”
I crossed the room before I even realized I had moved.
I wrapped my arms around her.
For half a second, she went stiff.
Then she collapsed against me.
She was crying so hard I could barely understand the words.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
I held her face.
“Stop.”
“I left.”
“You were sixteen.”
“I went with him.”
“You were a child trying to make a decision you didn’t understand.”
“I should have come home.”
“You’re safe now.”
She stared at me as if she didn’t know what to do with those words.
Michael wrapped both arms around us.
“We believe you,” he said.
Nora looked at him.
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“You don’t think I was stupid?”
Michael’s voice broke.
“I think you were sixteen.”
That was when she completely fell apart.
We talked for hours.
Not enough to cover eight years.
Not even close.
But it was a beginning.
At one point, we asked Nora if she wanted to come home with us.
She shook her head.
At first, that hurt.
Then she explained.
She already had an apartment.
A job.
Friends.
A therapist.
Savings.
She was planning to take classes at a community college.
After years of having someone else control her choices, she had worked incredibly hard to build a life where she could decide things for herself.
Returning immediately to her childhood bedroom felt like going backward.
“I want you in my life,” she said. “I just don’t know what that looks like yet.”
I took her hand.
“We don’t know either.”
She looked nervous.
I squeezed her fingers.
“But we can figure it out.”
Michael and I stayed in town three extra days.
Nora had breakfast with us the next morning.
Then dinner.
Then she walked with us along the boardwalk.
She didn’t step onto the sand.
Neither did I.
Before we left, Elaine gave Nora the turquoise cover-up.
Nora stared at it for a long time.
Then she handed it to me.
“You keep it.”
“Are you sure?”
CONTINUE READING…>>
