Come with me, back to that first day when I realized I was alone. I was driving home. I had been gone for over six months. Only the Lord knows how I had longed for that day. I had been hiding out with friends, of the family, who lived a couple of hours away from our small New England town. Oh how I had missed my little sisters and brother and things like just sitting in church with the whole family. I had attended Mass alone throughout the long, cold winter.

Well, truthfully, I was not alone. I always carried her with me. There was no escape for either of us. Ah, but did I really want an escape? No. Now that is the truth. If I could have kept her with me, without ruining lives, I thought over and over again; but, I had done the right thing. It was right for her, right for me, right for my little sisters, right for her adoptive parents, and most of all, right for my mother.

And there I was, headed home, with the seat beside me empty. Funny, I had never thought of it that way before this day. The feeling was one that was to stay with me for the next 35 years of my life. There was always an Empty Chair.