The Long in the Short

I don't remember much about the day when my mom ran away. My dad told me that she had tried to leave a few times before, but this time was for good. She was young (about twenty) when she took off to "find herself". Only a few weeks before, my dad had convinced her to come back to New Jersey from another episode of fleeing the family, he even went to pick her up in Indiana. I remember having a little welcome home party. I still hadn't realized what was going on. Then the night came where she was just... gone. She left my three younger sisters and I (all of us being under five and my youngest sister was not even a year old) under my dad's care and went to Indiana.
My dad must have realized that this time she was not coming back, because he tried to explain to my sisters and I that she left us. She left on a bus in the middle of the night, but we stayed up and prayed for her.