On My 18th Birthday, My Parents Drove Me to the Ai…

I removed my shoes. I placed my bag on the belt. I walked through a scanner and wondered whether grief showed up anywhere, whether some machine could detect that a person had been severed from her life less than an hour earlier.

At the gate, I sat near the window and stared at the plane ticket again. Mil Haven. The name looked fictional.

A place from a book about ghosts or witches or girls sent away for reasons nobody explained until the last chapter. I searched my memory for any mention of Vermont, any family story, any relative, any vacation, any photograph. Nothing.

My mother had always spoken of her past as if it were a room with the door locked. I knew she had grown up somewhere small. I knew she hated small towns.