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

Maybe a braver or wiser girl would have demanded proof, called the police, refused to get in a stranger’s truck. But I had been sent across state lines by the only people legally responsible for me, and the woman in front of me looked at me with more tenderness than my mother had shown in years. So I followed her.

Her truck was old and blue, with a rusted bumper and a cracked vinyl seat. It smelled like coffee, peppermint, and wool. A knitted blanket lay folded between us.

The heater rattled when she turned it on, then began blowing warm air over my knees. For several minutes, neither of us spoke. The road out of the airport moved through low commercial strips, then opened into countryside.

Vermont in early spring was not the postcard I might have imagined. It was gray and green and brown, still shaking winter out of its bones. Fields lay wet beneath patches of melting snow.