When I was fourteen, my mother and I traveled together
to Italy.
I wasn’t supposed to go with her. My father was. They
had planned the trip together as a second honeymoon, to
celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary. For months,
travel brochures and packing lists had littered the dining
room table. Mom had changed her laptop’s screensaver to
a picture of the Basilica. She got their passports out of the
safety deposit box and researched the Euro and compared
places to stay and transportation and restaurants. She pulled
out her old language books from college and reviewed Italian
verb conjugations.
Then, twelve days before they were set to leave, a week
before my final days of middle school, I came home to find the
dining room table bare again, polished and still as glass.
Mom’s car—the Prius I would inherit—was in the drive-
way, but the house felt echo-empty. The quiet hum of the air
conditioner, the clicking of the clock, and my own breath.
“Mom?” I called. “Hello?”
No answer. I took a soda from the fridge and drank it
standing at the counter. Then I pulled open the recycling bin
to throw away the can, and there it was—my parents’ trip, all
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