For a few seconds, I actually thought there had been some kind of glitch. A printer jam. A system error.
Something a supervisor would fix with a few keystrokes and an apologetic smile.
Surely they’d fix it. “Mom,” Grant said, not meeting my eyes.
“There’s no ticket for you. Just go home.”
He said it in the same tone he used when he was a teenager telling me the car needed gas or that practice had been moved to a different field.
Practical.
Detached. Just another problem on his list. The words didn’t make sense at first.
Around us, the gate area buzzed with that familiar airport hum: rolling suitcases, overlapping announcements, the squeal of a child somewhere behind us.
A little girl nearby waved a tiny American flag at an arriving soldier. A couple took a selfie under the departure board.
And in the middle of all that, my son told me to go home. Just go home.
I stared at him, waiting for a wink, a joke, a laugh, anything to crack the surface of his calm expression and reveal this was some kind of terrible, tasteless prank.
But he’d already turned toward the gate, one hand on the strap of his carry‑on, body angled away like the conversation was over. Karina was busy adjusting Elsie’s headphones, smoothing her daughter’s hair the way she always did when they were about to board. Elsie’s eyes were glued to her phone screen, thumbs moving fast.
No one looked back at me.
No one asked if I was okay. No one even seemed surprised.
For a wild second, I thought maybe I’d misheard him. Maybe my ears, like my knees and my back, were starting to betray me.
“Grant,” I started, my voice thin.
He lifted his hand without turning all the way around, a little dismissive gesture, the kind people use when they’re done arguing about who left the milk out. “Mom, please,” he said. “Don’t make a scene.
We’ll miss the boarding window.”
A young mother with a toddler in a stroller glanced over, then quickly looked away, the way people do when they sense something private unraveling in public.
I didn’t say anything else. The words crowded my throat, but my tongue felt thick, as if speaking would make all of this more real than I was prepared for it to be.
So I just nodded, turned, and wheeled my small suitcase through the crowd. The click of the wheels against the tile echoed louder than my heartbeat.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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