Janey sat down in the booth at the diner. She looked across the table and saw a middle-aged woman with gray streaks showing in her once auburn hair and bags under her eyes.

Her mother looked, as they say, as if she had been ridden hard and put away wet.”

“OK Mom. What do you want?” she asked.

“That’s no way to greet your mother. We haven’t seen each other for such a long time,” Amanda replied.

The younger woman hesitated a moment before speaking.

“Mom you took off about, what — a year and a half ago. The note you left Dad said you needed to find yourself. And that was the last that any of us heard from you until today,” Janey said, placing the blame squarely where it belonged.

Her mother fidgeted before answering.

“I needed some time away on my own.”

“Please don’t give me that line of bullshit, Mom. Dad called me up when he got home and found the note you left.

“He told me that after 25 years he knew that the lies you were spouting had to come from someone else — it wasn’t something you thought of on your own.”