When I got back from brushing my teeth, my mom was in her slip and my son Luca was nestled up next to her. Both of them were staring at the TV as if it were telling them secrets.
I didn’t think much of it until Luca leaned in and said in a flat voice, “That’s where you lied, Nana.”
My mum jumped. Not a twitch, but a shudder all throughout.
I entered the room. “What did he say?”
She didn’t say anything. All you have to do is hit the pause button. It was a black-and-white movie about old train stops in the Midwest.
Luca pointed again. “There. That’s where it is. You told Grandpa you were at a wedding, but you were really there.
The screen showed a terminal that was breaking apart. Joliet, Illinois.
I looked at my mom. She shook her head and pressed her lips together.
I said, “We’ve never been to Joliet.”
She stood up and walked to the hallway without saying a word.
It had been fifteen minutes and she still hadn’t come out. I checked on her. The bathroom door was locked. I knocked quietly.
“Mom? Are you all right?
“I’m fine,” she said through the door. She sounded like she was under a lot of stress. “Wait a minute.”
Luca went back to his LEGOs and hummed to himself like nothing had occurred. But my mind wouldn’t let it go.
That train station… That part of town… What made him say that? How could he even know about Joliet? He is six years old.
What did my mom’s face look like?
I tried again that night after Luca was asleep. Mom was in the kitchen, wiping the counter like she was waiting for anything to do.
“Do you want to talk about what happened before?”
She stared at me. “There’s nothing to say.”
“Luca mentioned something strange. He said a fib about Joliet. And you looked, Mom, like you saw a ghost.
Her hand stopped moving. The silk hung loosely between her fingertips.
“I’d rather not get into it,” she said in a hushed voice.
“Was there really a lie?” I asked. “Did you go to Joliet?”
She looked at me and turned to me. I saw a woman for the first time in years who didn’t seem to know who she was.
“I’ve been there once,” she added. “Long ago.” Before you were born.
I sat down. “What did Luca mean by that?” He wasn’t even alive yet.
She let out a sigh. “I’ve thought about that every day since he was born.”
I blinked. “What does that mean?”
She sat across from me and laid the rag on the table as if it were very important. Then she said in a trembling voice, “I had dreams when you were pregnant with Luca.” Odd ones. They started after your first ultrasound. A tiny boy wants to be at that same station. “Always waiting.”
My throat felt tight. “Waiting for what?”
She looked down. “Someone who never showed up.”
The only sound in the room was the refrigerator’s hum.
That night, she didn’t say anything else. I went to bed with questions crawling about in my chest like ants.
The next day, I did what any girl with a little anxiety issue and a curious mind would do. I used Google to find the Joliet rail station. They stopped using it in the late 1980s. Since then, it had primarily been unoccupied. Some photography students went there to take pictures in the dark. A local newspaper tried to acquire money to fix things. It looks like everything is normal.
There is one piece.
“The Runaway Bride Who Vanished at Joliet Station—1979” is the name of the story.
It was more of a story that folks told each other than an actual police report. It looks like Elise Warner told her fiancé the day before their wedding that she was heading to the store. She never came back. But a worker at the Joliet station said he saw a woman in a wedding dress get on a goods train the next morning. No bags. She was crying and holding flowers.
People never found her.
I read the article three times. I didn’t know what I was looking for. But the year 1979 was special. That was two years before I was born.
Before she was married, my mom’s last name was Warner.
That night, I asked her directly.
“Are you Elise Warner?”
She stayed still. She just shut her eyes, as if she knew the question was coming.
Yes, I was Elise. But I didn’t leave. I got home the next day.
“To Grandpa?”
“Yes, to your dad.”
“But you left,” I said. “You went to Joliet.” She wore a bridal dress.
She nodded her head. “I was afraid. I guess I wasn’t brave. It was too much tension. We weren’t really in love, your dad and I. People believed we should get married. “I don’t want to let you down.”
My heart raced. “But you did get on a train?”
“I didn’t get very far,” she said. “That platform made me cry for hours.” After that, I turned around, bought a bus ticket, and went home. Your dad never found out. He thought I had stayed at my sister’s place all night.
I tried to figure things out. ” Luca was right, then. “You lied.”
She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “And for some reason, he knew.”
For the following three days, everything was a haze. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My son, who was just a few years old, had learnt a secret that had been kept for fifty years.
And not just any secret. One that made a big difference in my life.
That weekend, we went to the park. Luca was eating a snow cone, and blue syrup was dripping down his chin.
“Nana was sad that day,” he stated out of the blue.
I looked at him. “What day?”
He said, “At the station.” “She sat next to the clock.” She held her knees together and had a hard time breathing.
I almost dropped my phone.
“How do you know that?” I asked respectfully.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I just remember.”
“You remember being there?”
He nodded his head. “I was with her. I sat next to her. But she couldn’t see me.
I got goosebumps.
That night, I called a friend named Kira. She was really interested in spiritual topics. Everything, including gemstones and regression therapy. I used to make fun of her, but now I’m not sure if I should have.
When I told her what happened, she didn’t say anything.
She responded, “There is a thing called a soul echo.” “It’s when someone you care about remembers something that happened before they were born.” Like a memory that has been shared, but with emotions.
I told them, “That’s not science.”
She said, “It’s not.” “But a six-year-old doesn’t know what Joliet looked like in the 1970s either.”
She was correct.
I didn’t tell Mom what Luca said while we were at the park. I didn’t mean for her to do that.
But something unexpected happened a few weeks later. In the mail, there was a letter. Written by hand. There is no address to send it back to.
It had an old picture in it. A girl, not even twenty, stood on the Joliet platform in a wedding dress with mascara running down her face and big eyes. There was no question that it was my mum.
There was only one line on the back of the picture:
“I never forgot you.” I came back too. – T.”
I spent hours looking at it. “T”? Who was T?
I showed the picture to my mom.
She gasped like she had been hit.
“Tony,” she murmured in a gentle voice. “His name was Tony.”
She sat down slowly.
She went on, “He was the man I was supposed to meet there.” “We were planning to run away. To California. He had a motorbike, dreams, and everything else. We loved each other, but he wasn’t “approved of.”
“What happened?”
She laughed softly, but it sounded more like a cry. “I waited for him for hours. I believed he was too afraid. But maybe he came late. “I may have left too early.”
I looked at the picture again.
“He took this,” I said.
She nodded. “But how did he get our address? How did he find out?
Luca walked into the room. “I told him.”
We both looked at him.
I asked, “What do you mean?”
He shot the photo. “He asked where you were.” That’s why I told him. He was quite charming. He said that Nana used to smile like the sun.
My mom began to weep.
She kept going for a long time.
A month later, she went to Joliet. I went with her. She stood on the platform again, but this time it was rusty and full of weeds. She didn’t speak a lot. She only murmured, “I’m sorry,” and looked around.
That summer, she changed. She smiled more often. She started painting again. She even joined a local group for seniors who wished to go on trips.
And what about Luca? He stopped talking about the train station. It looked like the memory had finally returned to its original location.
Then, around the end of August, another letter came.
This one had an address on it to ship it back to.
He sent it.
He was from the state of Oregon. Before then, he had lost his wife to cancer. No children. He said:
“I thought you weren’t coming. I waited till nightfall, but I might have missed you by a few minutes. I kept that day with me for forty years. It was unusual to see your grandson. He told you that you were safe. You let it go. That you still painted daisies.
That made Mom cry.
They started writing letters to each other. Then there were calls.
He came to see me for Christmas.
I thought it would be awkward. Regret. But when they met up at the airport again, it felt like time had stopped.
They hugged each other like kids do. Like those who lost years but found peace instead.
They sat on the porch and laughed that night. They talked about old record stores, banana milkshakes, and songs they thought the other person had forgotten.
Mom looked like she was five years older.
And what about Luca? He walked over to Tony and said, “You did it this time.”
“Thanks to you,” Tony murmured as he bent down and kissed his forehead.
I stood there and watched them. It was like the world had just softly mended something that was broken.
We constantly believe that time only moves forward. A moment that has passed cannot be recovered.
But some moments could be worth the wait. You can find these moments at old train stops. In dreams. Kids typically remember things they shouldn’t.
When my mom lied, it wasn’t about betrayal. It was about being terrified.
And the truth that came after?
That was about having courage.
About love not going away, but waiting until the right time.
This is what I found out:
We don’t always care about the past. It tries to help us improve.
And sometimes, the cosmos lets us continue a story we thought we had given up on.
If this story made you feel something, please share it. I like it. Let someone else know that it’s never too late to go home.