My mom disappeared when I was 12

But then a woman walks in.

She looks like my mother. Older. Scarred. Alive.

I rise to my feet.

She smiles.

“I couldn’t let them have the last word,” she says.

And I finally cry—for all the years lost, for the truth, and for her.

She pulls me into her arms, and for the first time since I was twelve, I feel like I’m home.