That’s good.” Dylan didn’t respond, and she narrowed her eyes. “You do know who I am?” Dylan slumped back against the door, the wooden rectangle the only thing holding him on his feet as his heart threatened to pound its way up his chest and out his mouth as he simultaneously fought to take in air. Yes, I know who you are, he thought, but couldn’t yet say. The passage of twenty- two years had obviously taken its toll on the woman standing in front of him, her cheeks showing a few lines, her figure no longer quite as slender, her eyes harder; but the face was the same, and that accent – musical, almost trilling – was exactly how he had always imagined it from his father’s descriptions. Dylan could never have mistaken her, not even if a century had passed. “Mom,” he whispered, which was all he could manage. She nodded with a small smile. “So, your father still has that photograph,” she said. “That’s why I let him take it, you know, so that you would know what I looked like.” She took a step forward, and her forehead creased slightly.
“Can you speak?”
“How . . . how did you get in here? What are you doing here?” He had to fight for every word at first, but then it was as though the most immediate questions had loosened his tongue and opened a floodgate. His heart
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