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spiritus sancti
, adding, “Go in peace.”
    Timothy left. But not in peace.
    Reluctantly, Tim tried to accept that he would never meet his earthly father. But he could not quell the longing for his mother—nor come to terms with the painful knowledge that he was separated from her by a mere two hours’ bus ride.
    He had tried for his own sake to believe Tuck’s luriddescriptions of a raving lunatic too mad to recognize him. To acknowledge that the terrible sight of her would cause him even more pain. But his visions were too strong to alter.
    At night his imagination would conjure up a pure, golden-haired woman in flowing white robes, a kind of madonna who, though physically too weak to care for him, nonetheless reciprocated his longings and prayed for his visit.
    Sometimes he would daydream that when he grew up and had a home of his own he would be able to take her in and care for her. He wanted her to know this. To reassure her.
    Which is why he had to see her.
    For his twelfth birthday, he pleaded for a special present: would they take him to the asylum to see her. Just look at her from afar even. But Tuck and Cassie refused.
    Six months later he made the same request and was put off even more brusquely.
    “Go for all I care,” Cassie had screamed with exasperation. “Take a look at my demented sister and see what you have for a mother. You’ll rue the day.”
    Tuck summed it up with his characteristically sardonic humor: “The present we’re givin’ you is not takin’ you.” He added, “Now let that be an end to it.”
    And it was an end. At least to
discussing
it. Now Tim had no choice but to take matters into his own hands.
    Early one Saturday morning, he casually told his aunt that he and some of the guys were going to watch the Knicks play at Madison Square Garden. She merely nodded, glad to be rid of him for the day. She did not even notice he was wearing his confirmation suit.
    Tim raced to the subway and took the express into Manhattan, to the Port Authority bus terminal on Eighth Avenue and Forty-first Street. He approached the ticket window apprehensively and asked for a round-trip ticket to Westbrook, New York. The gum-chewing clerk took the five-dollar bill, moist and crumpled, from the boy’snervous palm and pressed two buttons with her crimson-nailed finger. Her machine spewed out a card.
    Tim looked at it. “No, no,” he said, his voice breaking. “This is a child’s fare. I’m over twelve.”
    The woman stared at him. “Hey, kid, do me a favor,” she complained. “Make like it’s Christmas so I don’t hafta rebalance my till sheet. Besides, you must be a little nuts to be so honest.”
    A little nuts. The words were chilling for a boy on his way to his mother in an insane asylum.
    The next bus left at 10:50 A.M. Tim bought two Baby Ruth bars, which were intended to serve as lunch. But his anxiety had made him inordinately hungry, and he consumed them both more than a half hour before the bus took on its passengers.
    Feverish with anticipation and desperate to distract himself from thoughts of where he was going, he went downstairs again and bought a Captain Marvel comic.
    At last, the platform clock reached 10:45 and the driver, balding and bespectacled in a creased Greyhound uniform, announced that boarding would commence.
    There were not many people heading for upstate New York in the inclement January weather, so it was only a few seconds later that Tim was climbing aboard. Just as he was handing his ticket to the driver, a large paw grabbed him firmly by the shoulder.
    “Okay, buster, the game’s over.”
    He whirled around. It was a huge, barrel-chested black man, wearing a revolver and the intimidating blue of the New York police force.
    “Your name Hogan?” the officer growled.
    “What’s it to you? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
    “Well, I don’t know about that,” the policeman replied. “You sure fit the description I’ve got of a runaway named