I was standing on the sidewalk outside the charter station in Hartford, holding the handle of a brand-new tan suitcase I never asked for.
It still smelled like plastic and department store air.
My son, Ryan Collins, had handed it to me two days earlier, along with a glossy printed itinerary for a “dream escape” through cozy Vermont inns and mountain spas.
“Enjoy some time for yourself, Mom,” he’d said.
His smile had been wide.
Too wide.
The kind of smile that stretches but doesn’t soften.
Ryan is thirty-four. Successful. Well-dressed. Sharp with numbers. Since my husband passed three years ago, he’d drifted in and out of my life like the tide—intensely present one week, unreachable the next.
Flowers on Monday. Silence by Friday.
I told myself he was grieving in his own way. That adulthood was heavy. That I shouldn’t question generosity when it arrived.
But lately, he and his wife, Brittany, talked about one thing more than anything else:
Money.
The market.
Investments.
“Maximizing opportunity.”
And my house.
They called it “wasted equity.”
Every time I heard that phrase, something inside me tightened.
The bus door wheezed open.
Passengers shuffled forward, half-asleep and cheerful, clutching travel mugs and neck pillows. Someone laughed behind me. The smell of diesel hung in the cold morning air.
I reached into my coat pocket for my ticket.
My hands were shaking.
Why was I nervous?
This was supposed to be a gift.
A treat.
A break.
So why did it feel like I was leaving something unfinished behind me?
Then I heard it.
“Maggie! Maggie, wait!”
I turned.
Linda Parker—my neighbor from two houses down—was hurrying toward me in slippers and a cardigan, one hand clutching her side as she ran.
In ten years, I had seen Linda run exactly once.
That was when her beagle slipped its leash during a thunderstorm.
She grabbed my arm.
Her face was drained of color.
“Don’t get on that bus,” she whispered.
The world seemed to shrink.
“Linda… what are you saying?”
“Come home with me. Now.” She glanced over her shoulder, as if someone might be watching. “I found out something awful. About Ryan. About why he wants you gone today.”
Gone.
The word hit me harder than it should have.
“What do you mean gone?”
She fumbled for her phone, her fingers trembling.
“Brittany meant to forward an email to another Linda. It came to me by mistake. I opened it thinking it was for my daughter.”
She swallowed.
“They’re meeting a realtor at your house in forty minutes. They’re planning to list it.”
The chatter behind me faded.
The bus engine hummed like a warning.
“There’s more,” she said quietly. “They’ve already prepared paperwork. They’re planning to move your accounts while you’re on that trip.”
The ticket slipped from my hand.
I felt suddenly lightheaded.
Then my phone vibrated.
A message from Ryan.
Board now. Don’t answer calls. Just relax and let us handle everything.
The bus driver called out, “Last call!”
And I stood there—
Suitcase in hand.
Heart pounding.
Realizing this trip was never meant to be a vacation.
