Chapter 382 Lori's Wonder:>3

• She had started crying while she was telling me, and her driving was getting erratic, so I asked her to pull it over, while a knot of cold fear and hot shame and guilt built up in my stomach. Charlie, now mother, God, how do we get through this?
• I took the wheel of the Saturn and drove back to the old place on full auto-pilot, parked the car and ran inside to my mother. She looked shockingly old, thin and drawn, and one look at her told me she was nearly done; I had seen it too many times before to not recognise the signs. I lost it at that point, the years I had been away a huge gulf between us, time and togetherness I would never recapture, and now there was no time left to try and make it up to her...
• The guilt tore at me as I realised Lori was right; she'd been right, I should never have gone away, now it was too late...