The boy had not spoken in three days. His footprints stopped in the middle of the field road, at a place where nothing was, and did not continue — his mother had walked out at dusk to see, and that was what she found.
So she did it the way her own mother had. Half a bowl of rice, three sticks of incense pushed upright into it, his jacket over her arm. She went out through the gate after dark and walked to the place where the footprints ended and called with the long drawn note the calling takes.
Come back.
And out of the dark, faint, from somewhere ahead of her: he's come back.
She turned and walked home calling, and each time she called, the answer came, and each time it came it was closer. She did not look behind her. At the gate the voice answering her was near enough to have been at her shoulder, and she did not look behind her then either. On the threshold, set neatly side by side, was a pair of his shoes.
She put the bowl on the table. The incense had burned down to stubs. In the bed the quilt was higher than it had been when she left.
Mother, the boy said, from under it. He had not spoken in three days.
She had her hand on the corner of the quilt when he said the rest of it: Mother, why did you call two of us back?
On the threshold there were two pairs of shoes. Identical. One pair older than the other.