I sat behind the wheel of my sedan, watching an airport shuttle van back into a marked space fifty yards off.

My mother hadn’t said a word about the two heavy suitcases locked in my trunk.

She hadn’t said anything about the metal key ring I’d left on the oak table in her front entryway sixteen hours earlier.

I rubbed the muscles at the back of my neck with my right hand until the skin stung.

The text sat there on the screen, bright and silent, waiting for an answer.

“He spent three hours out in the yard this afternoon,” a second text said, landing just under the first.