“So?”
“If she doesn’t see someone nearby, she panics.”
I frowned.
“Why your room?”
Mia hesitated.
“Because she thinks it’s hers.”
Kyle returned a moment later.
He looked exhausted.
Dark circles framed his eyes, his shirt was wrinkled, and his hair looked as though he hadn’t slept in days.
“When were you planning to tell me your mother came back?” I asked.
His shoulders sagged.
“I found out four days ago.”
“You found out?”
“I thought she left 30 years ago.”
I searched his face for any sign he was joking.
There wasn’t one.
“My father told me she walked out on us when I was six,” he said quietly.
“Last week the police found an elderly woman wandering outside a grocery store. Something in her purse eventually led them to me.”
I looked toward the hallway.
Gladys was humming softly inside Mia’s room.
“I didn’t recognize her,” Kyle said quietly. “Thirty years changes people. Mia had never seen her before.”
My mind raced.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I tried.”
