I sat in the parking lot with the engine off and my hands still on the wheel. The shelter was a low brick building with a faded sign. I had already been there twenty minutes.

My name is Carol. I am a nurse and I am sixty six. I kept telling myself I would just sit a little longer and then decide.

I put Daniel out when he was twenty two. He had started taking money from my purse and selling things from the house. The pastor at our church pulled me aside after service one Sunday and said it plain.

“Sometimes love has to lock the door,” he told me. I nodded like I understood even though my stomach felt sick. Daniel stood by the kitchen table with a duffel bag that night. “Mom please do not do this,” he said. I told him he could not stay anymore. He walked out and the door clicked behind him.

The first year I kept the porch light on every night. I do not know why. I would come home from my shift at the hospital and check the back steps like he might be sitting there. He never was.

Work made it worse. I started IVs on men his age and listened to their mothers cry in the hallway. I went home and could not tell anyone where my own son slept. Some nights I drove around after work looking for him near the old parks. I never found him.

The call came on a Tuesday. A woman from a shelter forty minutes away said she had seen the last name on his intake form and took a chance. “Your son Daniel is here,” she said. “He is been clean thirty one days.” I asked her how she knew to call me. She said he talked about his mother in the group sessions.

I drove straight there after my shift. I did not change out of my scrubs. The whole way I kept hearing her voice on the phone. She said he mentioned my name more than once. He told the group he stole from me and that he wished I knew he was trying now.

When I pulled into the lot I turned the car off and just stared at the door. I almost started the engine again. I told myself he might not want to see me. I told myself the pastor had been wrong but that did not change what I had done.

I finally got out and walked inside. The same nurse met me at the front desk. She looked tired too. “He is in the day room,” she said. “He does not know you are here yet.”