And the green backpack sat open at my feet like a map with no roads.
I didn’t open the notebook that night.
He never woke up.
I took the backpack home, set it on my kitchen table, and walked around it for almost two hours.
The apartment felt too quiet.
My mother’s mug still sat near the sink, though she had been gone nearly a year.
I had never moved it.
I told myself it was because I wasn’t ready.
I took the backpack home.
At midnight, I opened another envelope.
Airport.
Inside was a boarding pass from nine years earlier.
On the back: “He called his daughter from Gate 14.”
