“Mom?” The voice cracked before I even turned around.

I rushed downstairs and found Mary Lou standing in the doorway, a grocery bag hanging from one hand. For a moment neither of us moved. Then she dropped everything and ran to me. We held each other so tightly that twelve years of loneliness seemed to collapse into a single heartbeat.

She cried harder than she had at the airport all those years ago. When we finally sat down, I asked the question that had haunted me for more than a decade. “Where is Kang Jun?” Her face changed instantly. She walked to a cabinet, removed a framed photograph,