For two hundred minutes we are waiting, and still, the eleven year old has not come. In ten more minutes, I say I will telephone the hospitals, maybe the police.
One serving stays at the table, and her room as empty as the night road upon which a car is supposed to deliver her home.
And then I think of the times I was late, and the parent waited, alone, afraid. Only now can I know the worry of everything that might have happened, only now the hope that all will turn out well – one as large as the other.
We try one more time. Just as we look in her room again for the misplaced phone number, the headlights come down the gravel driveway.
The daughter as miraculous as the day she was born. Not alone, not afraid, and not yet able to understand us.
Text by Madeleine Marie Slavick
Photo by Luo Hui
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