I sit on the bus for two hours with the printed photo in my bag.

  I’ve been rehearsing the moment for weeks. The door, her face, what I say first. I’ve played it so many times that it has grooves in it now, a path worn smooth from use. In the best version she pulls me in before I can say anything. In the version I return to most, I get to say the speech. The one that starts with: I was five. I didn’t know what I was saying. I’m sorry.

  And she says: I know.

  And that’s enough.

  That’s enough in the imagination. Would it be enough in real life.

  The bus pulls into the station. I get off. I find the street from the location tag, which takes twenty minutes and one wrong turn. I find the coffee shop.

  I stand outside it.

  What if she’s not here today. What if she’s here and she doesn’t want me. What if she has a whole life and I’m about to walk into it and break something.

  A woman comes out of the coffee shop.

  My heart stops.

  It’s her. It’s actually her. She’s older, hair a little different, but the way she holds herself, the way she moves, I would know her anywhere. I have been knowing her from a distance my entire life.

  Don’t run. Just walk. Just walk up and say it.

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  I cross the street.

  Ten feet. Five.

  “Mom?”

  She turns.

  She looks at me.

  And she doesn’t know who I am.

  Not a flicker of recognition. Just open, polite, the face of someone looking at a stranger who has said something unexpected.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Do I know you?”

  She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know my face.

  It makes sense. I know it makes sense. I was five when she left and I’m nineteen now and fourteen years is a long time and faces change. I know all of that. I know it.

  It still goes through me like something cold.

  “I’m Elise,” I say. “I’m your daughter.”

  Her face changes.

  Something moves across it, real and unguarded, just for a second. Then it smooths. Her eyes settle. Her posture settles.

  “Oh,” she says.

  Just that.

  Oh.

  I had a speech. I had the whole speech ready. I had responses prepared for tears, for anger, for her pulling me in, for a door in my face. I had fourteen years of rehearsal.

  I didn’t prepare for oh.

  I didn’t prepare for being a stranger and then being oh.

  A man comes up behind her and puts his hand on her shoulder the easy way you touch someone you’ve been touching for years. He smiles at me. He has no idea what is happening.

  She has a life. A real one. A good one. And I’m standing in the middle of it.

  “Sorry,” I hear myself say. “I think I had the wrong person.”

  I smile. It’s the good smile. The practiced one.

  I back up a step. Two steps. I say something else, some pleasant nothing.

  Then I turn and I walk.

  I keep the smile on until I turn a corner and then I find a wall and I sit down on the pavement with my back against it and my knees up and I breathe.

  She didn’t know my face. And then she said oh.

  I breathe.

  She said oh.

  I stay there until my chest unclenches enough to stand. Then I get up, straighten my jacket, and walk very carefully to the bus station.

  I don’t write in my notebook that night.

  I just lie there and stare at the note on my wall.

  When mom comes back, I’ll tell her I’m sorry and then I’ll show her how much I miss and love her.

  I wrote that when I still thought it would happen differently.