Chapter 45After stopping for twenty minutes in traffic for a bumper-to-bumper accident on the Interstate, the Greyhound bus pulled into Milton at half past three.
I called my mother from the bus stop and told her I was home.
She arrived fifteen minutes later, waving and smiling excitedly as if I had been away for two years. She pulled into the packed lot and parked the car, unfastened her seatbelt, and opened the door, rushing over to me with arms outstretched.
Her embrace was tight, squeezing like a boa constrictor.
“I haven’t been gone long, Mom,” I said, my voice stifled in the crook of her neck and in her damp, strawberry scented hair.
“It’s good to have you back, Jay.”
We got into the car. She pulled out of the small shopping plaza where local stores were being forced to close,
