纸条悬浮着贴在冰箱上，是列奥纳多夫人留下的，十分简短：“你母亲来过。”

    After years apart, something-if just a whisper-must have told my mother that her boy needed her, that he was about to leave the one place she knew to find him. Courting danger, I tried prying some information out of Mrs. Leonard. She told me that my mother had called from the Norwalk mental hospital.

    分别了那么多年之后，冥冥之中肯定有什么——或许就是一声低语——告知母亲她的孩子需要她，他就要离开这个她所知道的能找到他的唯一的地方。我冒着危险，试着从列奥纳多夫人那打听一些情况。她告诉我我母亲从诺沃克精神病院来的。

    "Did she say what she wanted?" I asked.

    “她有没有说需要什么？”我问到。

    "How would anyone ever know what Hope wanted?"

    “怎么会有人知道霍普需要什么呢？”

    I sat at my bedroom desk and pored over a map, figuring out a route to the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk. Round-trip, the distance was about 90 miles. Two days after my mother called, I left the house early, before anyone else awoke, and walked to the bus stop. After several transfers, I arrived at the edge of the San Fernando Valley. By midmorning I had only begun the long journey through Los Angeles County's immense inner core.

    我坐在卧室的桌前 ......