At the check-in counter, the clerk smiled warmly. “Good morning, Ms. Carter. Passport, please.”
Grandma handed it over, her hand steady this time. The clerk typed for a moment, checking the system, and then smiled again.
“Everything is confirmed.”
Grandma looked at me, standing beside her, since I’d insisted on coming along to see her off properly this time. “Everything?”
“Everything,” the clerk confirmed.
Grandma laughed then, a real laugh, unguarded and full, the kind I honestly hadn’t heard from her in years, maybe not since before Grandpa died.
As we walked together toward security, she suddenly stopped.
“Wait.”
I turned back toward her.
She reached into her purse, and for one brief, terrifying second, some old anxious part of me thought she’d forgotten something important. Instead, she pulled out a small yellow envelope, the same one Grandpa had left twelve years earlier, the one that had started everything.
