Justine held her son’s hand as they stood in line.
“How much longer?” West whined.
Justine tried hard not to snap. She’d made herself a promise to hold it together for her son. For West.
“This part can take a while,” she reminded him, “but after we get through the line and go through the big machines, we’ll find a spot by the window to look at the planes taking off.”
As a toddler, West would have lit up at the idea of watching giant planes taxiing outside Logan airport. Now he was four and already jaded.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, yanking down on her arm.
Justine freed her hand and pulled out her cell, not because she had anything important to look at on her screen but because she needed to rest her nerves. It had been years since she’d flown anywhere. That was before she’d become a mother, and even those few short experiences hadn’t been all that friendly to her anxiety. Now she had West to worry about, not only for his safety but also for her sanity and that of all the other passengers on their flight.
West was what his daycare teacher called “energetic,” and Justine wasn’t exactly looking forward to trying to keep her son entertained and quiet for the next five hours, especially not when she herself was so nervous about traveling.
West had been looking forward to this trip for months. During his four years on the earth, he’d never ventured beyond about a fifty-mile radius from their New England home. She wondered what he’d think about Detroit.
She wondered if he would hate it just as much as she did.
It wasn’t exactly Justine’s idea to head back to Michigan. When she moved away, she’d made herself a promise never to return, and up until now she’d remained true to her word.
Her husband and her therapist thought the trip was a good idea. A chance to get some kind of closure, maybe.
Or maybe the chance to tell her mother how much she hated her once and for all.