We talked until the café workers started cleaning up around us
We sat in that terrible café until the workers started mopping the floors and giving us pointed looks.
We talked about our lives. Jobs and marriages and divorces. Mia’s daughter. My lack of children. Partners who’d come and gone. Cities we’d lived in. Stupid little memories that matched perfectly.
The chipped blue mug that everyone in the children’s home fought over because it was the only one without a crack.
The hiding spot under the back staircase where we’d go when things got overwhelming.
The volunteer named Mrs. Chen who always smelled like oranges and would sneak us extra graham crackers.
Before we left, Mia looked at me with tears streaming down her face and said, “You kept your promise.”
“What promise?”
“You told me you’d find me,” she said. “You did.”
I started crying all over again because technically I hadn’t found her—a random business trip and pure chance had—but I understood what she meant.
I hugged her, and it was weird hugging what was essentially a stranger who also happened to be the most important person from your childhood, but it was also the most right thing I’d felt since I was eight years old.
We exchanged numbers, addresses, email, every possible form of contact we could think of like we were afraid the other would disappear if we didn’t anchor ourselves to each other immediately.
Rebuilding a relationship after 32 years apart is harder than finding each other was
We didn’t pretend those thirty-two missing years hadn’t happened.
We started small. Texts throughout the day. Phone calls on weekends. Photos of our lives—my apartment, her house, Lily’s school events, my office.
The first time we tried to video chat, we both cried so hard we couldn’t actually talk for ten minutes.
We’re still figuring it out. We’ve both built entire lives that existed without the other person in them, and now we’re trying to stitch those lives together without ripping anything that’s already there.
