“This is the one,” she says, and points to a line at a take-out window. “See? The locals know.”

“Sam,” she says, after we’ve taken our seats, “have you tried fresh guava juice before?”

“Guava?” Sam screws up his face.

“Just you wait.” Lorna kisses her fingers theatrically and Sam smiles, but I can’t help noticing how thin her fingers are, how gaunt her cheeks as she mimes the kiss.

I see Mom coming down the street first, eyes on her phone as she navigates with Google Maps to the address I gave her. When I see her walking towards us I feel a pang. She’s coiffed and groomed again, looking much more herself, but amid all the bustle of this vibrant city she looks out of place; older.

Lorna breaks off from what she’s saying and follows where I’m looking, and I hear her slow exhale.

“Thirty-six years,” she says.

It hits me that when she last saw Mom, Mom was my age. And now she’s seeing her age more than three decades in the blink of an eye. And when Mom looks up and finally sees us, I see the same slow, settling shock in her eyes too, as she takes in the woman sitting next to me, no longer the eighteen-year-old Mom knew.

We all fall silent, and Mom’s pace seems to slow as she closes the last few feet. Lorna stands from her chair.

“Gloria,” she says, and I see the tremor pass over Mom’s face.

There’s a hesitant, uncertain moment while they both look at each other, and then, carefully, move into a tentative embrace. It doesn’t look especially comfortable but it lasts a few seconds, as though they’re both trying to find something in that moment that they’ve been searching for. Whether they do or not, I don’t know.

Lorna pulls back.

“I guess you’re not looking too bad, Gloria,” she says. “Considering.”

Mom lets out a laugh that’s mostly just a release of air.

“I suppose I could say the same,” she says, and awareness pulses around the table as everyone but Sam remembers Lorna’s diagnosis.

“So many years,” Mom says, standing back. She glances around like she’s taking in the city for the first time. “This is where you’ve been?”

Lorna shrugs. “For the last while. You know me, Gloria. Always the nomad.”

Mom shakes her head faintly. It’s a while before she and Lorna seem ready to break eye contact with each other and sit down at the table with us. A server comes by asking us if we’re ready to order and then quickly retreats when she sees our dazed looks.