The blanket went deeper inside my coat, against my heart, where it belonged.
Then, ignoring the fire in my knees, I knelt and pulled a small cardboard box from the bottom of my bag, the one that had traveled with me all that way. Inside it was the truth of who I was. I took a plain sheet of paper from my purse and quickly wrote one last message. Tears slipped down my face as I set the box gently on the welcome mat. The pink blanket wasn’t the only gift I had brought that day. There was something else too.
I straightened, smoothed my coat, and walked back down the steps into the dusk without looking behind me.
***
The motel room smelled of stale smoke and old rain. One bare bulb swung above the sagging mattress, the peeling wallpaper curling like tired hands.
My legs throbbed from the long flight and the longer walk back from Jason’s porch.
