“You’re going to stand here until I’m gone, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Even after the car turns the corner?”
“Probably.”
She smiled through her tears.
“That’s a little dramatic.”
“It is Irish.”
She pressed the brass key into her coat pocket.
Then she got into the taxi.
The driver pulled away gently.
My daughter twisted in her seat and looked through the rear window.
I raised one hand.
She raised hers.
The car reached the bend where the first Nora had vanished without looking back.
For one terrible second, the taxi’s roof slipped behind the hedge.
Then the brake lights flared.
The car stopped.
The rear door opened, and my daughter stepped onto the road.
She did not run all the way back.
She only walked far enough for me to see her clearly.
The wind pulled at her coat as she lifted both hands around her mouth.
“I looked back, Mam!” she called.
Her voice travelled down the road.
“I saw you!” I shouted.
The driver waited while she returned to the car.
Before getting inside, she turned once more.
Then the road took her.
I remained at the gate until the sound of the engine disappeared.
I stayed after the tail lights were gone.
I stayed until the cold reached through my sleeves and the neighbour across the road switched off her front-room lamp.
Only then did I walk back toward the house.
The hallway looked larger without the suitcase.
On the table lay the old envelope and the photograph of the first Nora in Boston.
I placed the unposted letter inside again, but the brass key was gone.
That mattered.
At the airport, my daughter sent a message before boarding.
No grand speech.
No promise she could not keep.
Just three lines.
I am frightened.
I am still going.
I will not disappear.
She kept that promise.
She called after landing.
She called the following Sunday and almost every Sunday after that.
Some weeks she sounded triumphant.
Other weeks she cried in a room she pretended was not lonely.
She found better work, lost it, found another job and told me the truth before shame could turn silence into a locked door.
The one-way ticket remained one-way for longer than either of us expected, but she came home for visits.
Each time she left, I walked her down the path.
Eventually, she stopped teasing me about it.
Years later, I visited her in Boston.
On the morning of my return flight, she carried my case downstairs and walked me past the front steps of her building.
“You can say goodbye here,” I told her.
She shook her head.
“That is not how we do it.”
