Liam
The plane lands in Toronto, and I step off the ramp with Zoe's hand in mine, my heart pounding, my mind racing through all the ways this could go wrong. Victor gave us an address, a small house in a quiet neighborhood, the place where my mother has been living for the last two years, hiding from the people who killed my father, hiding from me, hiding from the life she left behind.
We take a taxi through the city, and I watch the streets pass, the houses, the trees, the people living their lives, unaware of the woman hiding among them, unaware of the son who has come to find her. Zoe holds my hand, and she does not speak, and I am grateful for her silence, for the space it gives me to breathe, to think, to feel.
The house is small and white, with a porch and a garden and a swing hanging from a tree in the front yard. I stand at the gate, and I look at the door, and I feel the fear rise in my chest, the same fear I felt when I was a child, waiting for my mother to come home, waiting for her to hold me, waiting for her to tell me that everything was going to be okay.
"She is in there," Zoe says, and her voice is soft, steady, the voice of a woman who has faced worse and survived. "She has been waiting for you. Go."
I walk up the path, my legs heavy, my heart pounding, and I knock on the door, and I wait, and the seconds stretch into hours, into years, into the whole of my life. The door opens, and she is standing there, her hair gray, her face lined, her eyes the same color as mine, and I see the recognition in her face, the joy, the fear, the love.
"Liam," she says, and her voice is weak, thin, the voice of a woman who has been hiding for too long. "My son."
I do not speak, because there are no words for this, for the sight of my mother alive, for the years I spent mourning her, for the anger and the grief and the love that are all tangled up inside me. I step forward, and I pull her into my arms, and I hold her, and she holds me, and we cry, and the world falls away, the past, the pain, the fear, all of it disappearing until there is nothing but this, nothing but us, nothing but the love that has been waiting to be found.
"I am sorry," she says, and her voice is muffled against my chest. "I am so sorry, Liam. I did not know how to come back. I did not know if you would want me."
I pull back, and I look at her, at the woman who gave me life, at the woman who left to protect me, at the woman who has been living in the shadows, waiting for this moment. "I have been looking for you my whole life," I say, and my voice is rough, broken, the way I feel when I look at her. "I did not even know it."
Zoe is standing at the gate, watching us, her eyes bright with tears, and I wave her forward, and she walks up the path, and I take her hand, and I look at my mother, and I say, "This is Zoe. She is my wife."
My mother looks at Zoe, and she smiles, and I see the recognition in her eyes, the same recognition I felt when I first saw Zoe, the recognition of someone who has found something they did not know they were looking for. "She is beautiful," my mother says, and she takes Zoe's hands, and she holds them, and she says, "Thank you for bringing him to me."
Zoe smiles, and I see the tears on her cheeks, the same tears I feel on my own. "He brought himself," she says. "I just stood beside him."