I froze. Gabriel Vance had disappeared twenty years earlier. “Why are you asking about him?” I demanded, but she only repeated his name. I promised, hoping to calm her. Seconds later, the heart monitor sounded a continuous alarm. My mother was gone.

That evening, the nurse handed me my mother’s belongings in a plastic bag. Among the few dollars, a silver ring, and two brass keys, I found an old municipal citation from 2012. It accused Martha of leaving wooden crates of canned groceries near the fence of the Oakridge municipal dump.

Six dates were listed, each beside the same amount: forty-two dollars and fifty cents, written in faded red ink. I couldn’t understand why my mother had risked a fine to leave food at a dump. She had always insisted we never interfere in other people’s business.