We pulled to a stop next to a gray Chevy truck that looked like it was from the 1980s, and I cut the engine, and there we were at the Farm. I realized Murphy was holding her breath, same as you do in tunnels or while passing graveyards.

“What are you doing, Murphy?”

She shrugged. “It seemed like something important was happening, something superstitious. I didn’t want to jinx us, so I held my breath.”

“But you don’t believe in luck,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “But it can’t hurt any.”

I saw a woman peeking out at us from one of the windows, and then the front door opened and there she stood: a slim, slight lady with long gray hair and a faded yellow dress. It was like seeing a ghost right there, a ghost from our future, one that should have come to haunt us in our own old age. Because there stood our mom. I mean, the exact spitting image of her, only aged twenty years or so—older than Mom would ever be—wringing her hands on the porch, big tears in her eyes, like this was the day she’d been expecting, dreading, for years and years and years. She looked exactly as I’d seen her in my vision.

“Holy shit,” said Murphy.

“I know,” I said. “It’s her. It’s Mom too, what she would have looked like.” I turned to Murphy. “And it’s you. It’s you in fifty years, seeing as you look so much like Mom already.”

Murphy’s mouth hung open, dumb and wide. I didn’t blame her any. Must be weird looking right into your future like that.

We stepped out of the car and onto the gravel.

“Grandma?” I said.

The woman nodded. Then she ran down the stairs and over to us and threw her arms around us, pulling us into a hug the likes of which we’d never gotten, a squeeze so tight I thought it would crush me for a minute, until Grandma started crying, and Murphy started crying, and then so did I. I couldn’t stop. None of us did for a full minute there. We just knelt down in the gravel, and it was like we were repenting, like we were all saying sorry to each other for never having been around before, and now it was all going to be okay because we were becoming a family in that moment, being fused into one by this great weeping hug from a woman stronger than she looked.

And I liked that. I liked it a whole hell of a lot.

“Come on, kids,” said our grandma, wiping the tears from her face. “Come on inside. We have much to talk about. But that can wait until after dinner. It can all wait. Because I have my family back now. My beautiful family has returned to the Farm, and I’ve never been happier in all the days of my life.”

We followed Grandma inside the house, the big front door slamming shut behind me like a closed book.