They ate dinner in silence, eying each other between bites. After the police brought Norah home and explained what had happened on the bridge, Margaret was so distracted that she nearly forgot to cook anything at all. For the first time, she was frightened by the girl and her dangerous stories, wary of asking too much and of the truth that might spill out. Late in the evening, they sat down to table, avoiding a single wrong word. She scrambled some eggs, burnt some toast, and laid out two jars of preserves. There had been a scene at first, a confrontation immediately after the uniforms departed, a lecture on the need to stay out of trouble. The Delarosas called, traces of panic in the voices on the wire, spouting some nonsense about a stranger who had visited their store asking about Norah, but Margaret dismissed the connection as superstitious paranoia. She gave Norah a warning on the dangers of high places, an admonition against the telling of stories, and a plea to drop once and for all this talk of angels. Norah refused to engage and promised only to be good and careful. “The time is at hand,” she replied to a question of why, and for the first time, Margaret was impatient with the cryptic nature of her foundling. Food served as their temporary truce. She resolved to speak to the girl again in the morning, but at dinner she was more grateful that no harm had come. The child was safe, licking the peaches off a jelly spoon.
Three big knocks at the door were pursued by the creak of the hinges, and a familiar voice called out hello. “Aunt Diane,” Norah shouted, and raced from her chair, nearly slamming into her full force in the foyer. Throwing wide her arms, she nestled her head against Diane's chest and hugged her tightly. “I knew you would come.”
“Behave yourself, child,” Diane said, patting her head. “Where is my sister?”
At that moment, Margaret turned the corner to find her lost daughter standing before her.
“I should have called first,” Diane said, “but I wasn't sure until right now that she would actually go through—”
“Mom.” Erica brought her hands to her mouth and wept.
“And I wanted to see your face when I brought her home. Maggie?”
Norah stepped into the shadows.
Stunned, Margaret could not move, though every muscle twitched with reflexive energy. A ghost not six feet away, her baby. “Erica?”
Her daughter swept past Diane and embraced her, held on so tightly that when they finally parted to look again, kiss, and embrace again, she left a sore spot on Maggie's cheek where bone met bone. They did not speak for a long time, content to cry and touch, to prove that the other was real.
“Is it you?” Margaret asked. Her daughter was a stranger, though closer to her than anyone in her life. She had willed her return for so long that she was stunned by the answer to her desire, and it was as if Erica had left to spend the night with Joyce Green and returned the next morning. Had fallen down the rabbit hole and popped up like a groundhog, shadowless. She was seven years old the night before and twenty-eight the next day. She was a crocus in the snow. The summer of cicadas. Here and gone and here again. Changed, but still the baby in the cradle, brave child diving into a pressing tide, teenager laughing at a lucky draw at cards. She had blown away and come back after the wind had circled the globe. Erica was hers once more.
“I'm so, so sorry about Daddy. I was afraid I'd never see you again.” Erica glanced once at the child, but held in her mother's arms, she could think of nothing but their reunion. Aunt Diane was right; her mother looked older than her years. Careworn, time-trodden. The fine lines of sun and worry, gray hair at the temples, the slackening of her skin. Margaret was crushed and beaten. Mangled by worry. Tried by a deep pain coursing in the bones. Slow to realize the fact of her daughter's presence. Yet she was ineffably her mother, had cheated the grave. She was steadfast as sorrow. She was forgiveness.
Allowing mother and daughter some privacy, Diane led Norah into the kitchen. They, too, did not speak to one another for some time but stared at each other in deep regard. “Surprised to see your mother again?” Diane asked. “Or should I say, for the first time.”
“How did you find her?”
“You should know. I went to New Mexico, like you said. The question is how did you know she would be there?”
“Gramma,” she began, and thought better. “Mrs. Quinn had an old letter but never went to get her. I couldn't go because nobody asked. I knew you would go if shown the way. You are brave.”
“Lionhearted.”
Norah capped the jelly jars and set the dirty plates in the sink. “I knew you would go the moment we met.”
“And just how did you know that? Another one of your heavenly powers?”