Maggie had made this trip so many times over the years. Florida to Massachusetts, Massachusetts to Florida. The geography of her life stretched between these two points, the place where she had raised her children and the place where she had rebuilt herself. For a long time, Massachusetts had felt like home and Florida like an escape. Now the balance had shifted. Captiva was home. Massachusetts was memory.
But memory had a pull of its own.
They boarded the plane and found their seats, Maggie by the window, Paolo in the middle, Chelsea on the aisle. The aircraft was smaller than Maggie had expected, the rows cramped and the overhead bins already overflowing with luggage. She tuckedher purse beneath the seat in front of her and settled in for the flight.
The plane taxied, accelerated, lifted. Maggie watched through the window as Florida fell away beneath them, the coastline giving way to clouds, the familiar landscape shrinking until it was just a patchwork of green and blue and brown. She had never loved flying, but she had made her peace with it. The discomfort was temporary. The destination was what mattered.
Chelsea fell asleep within twenty minutes, her head tipped back against the seat, the mystery novel forgotten in her lap. Paolo read his magazine, occasionally pointing out an interesting technique or a piece of furniture he admired. Maggie tried to watch a movie on the screen in front of her, but her mind kept drifting north, to a farmhouse in Massachusetts, to a daughter who was waiting.
She thought about the last time she had seen Beth, at Christmas, when the whole family had gathered on Captiva for the holidays. Beth had been visibly pregnant then, her belly round beneath the festive sweater she wore, but she had still seemed like herself. Energetic, capable, slightly exasperated by Gabriel's hovering. Now she was thirty-seven weeks along, carrying twins, and Maggie could only imagine how different she must look and feel.
Motherhood changed a woman. Not just the physical changes, though those were significant. But the internal shifts, the reordering of priorities, the way the self-expanded to make room for someone new, in this case two new someones.
Maggie remembered the first time she had held Michael, the overwhelming surge of love and terror that had flooded through her. She had looked at that tiny face and understood, in a way she never had before, that she would do anything to protect him. Anything at all.
Beth would feel that too. Would hold her babies andunderstand the weight and the wonder of it. Would join the long line of mothers who had come before her, stretching back through generations, each one passing something essential to the next.
The flight passed slowly, the hours marked by the drink cart and the captain's occasional announcements about altitude and weather. They hit a patch of turbulence somewhere over the Carolinas, the plane shuddering and dropping in a way that made Chelsea wake with a gasp and grab the armrest.
“I hate flying,” she muttered. “Have I mentioned that I hate flying?”
“Several times,” Paolo said mildly.
“Good. I want it on the record.”
The turbulence passed, and Chelsea returned to her nap, and eventually the captain announced their descent into Boston. Maggie pressed her face to the window and watched the landscape emerge from the clouds. The sprawl of the city, the curve of the harbor, the patchwork of suburbs spreading outward in every direction. Massachusetts in March, still brown and bare, waiting for spring to arrive.
They landed smoothly and taxied to the gate. The process of deplaning was slow, passengers jostling for position in the aisle, overhead bins opening and closing, the general chaos of arrival. Maggie waited patiently, her carry-on clutched in her hands, until finally they were moving, shuffling down the jetway and into the terminal.
Boston's Logan Airport was larger and louder than Fort Myers, the halls crowded with travelers from a dozen different flights. They made their way to the rental car counter.
Paolo handled the paperwork while Maggie and Chelsea stood to the side, stretching muscles that had stiffened during the flight. The air here was different, Maggie noticed. Colder, drier, carrying the particular smell of a northern city in late winter. She had forgotten how different it felt, how the climate of a place could shift your entire sense of being.
“You okay?” Chelsea asked.
“Fine. Just readjusting.” Maggie smiled. “It's strange, being back. I've been away long enough that it feels foreign. But also familiar. Like a language I used to speak fluently and now have to work to remember.”
“That's poetic.”
“I've had a lot of time to think about it.”
Paolo returned with the keys to a midsize SUV, something practical that could handle the New England roads and any late-season weather that might appear. They loaded the luggage into the trunk and climbed in, Maggie in the passenger seat, Chelsea in the back.
“GPS says about forty-five minutes to Boxford,” Paolo said, programming the address into his phone. “Assuming traffic cooperates.”
“Traffic never cooperates in Boston,” Maggie said. “That's one thing that hasn't changed.”
They pulled out of the airport and merged onto the highway, joining the river of cars flowing north. The scenery was familiar and strange at once, the billboards and exits that Maggie had passed a thousand times, now viewed through the lens of distance. She had lived here for most of her adult life. Had raised her children here, buried her marriage here, endured the worst and best years of her existence within these state lines.
Now she was a visitor.
The drive took closer to an hour, thanks to a slowdown near the Route 128 interchange. Chelsea dozed in the back seat while Paolo navigated and Maggie watched the landscape change. The city gave way to suburbs, the suburbs to smaller towns, the smaller towns to the rural roads of the north shore. The trees were bare, the fields brown, but here and there she spotted the first hints of green, the earliest bulbs pushing up through the cold soil.
Spring was coming. Even here, even in this place that seemed locked in winter, life was preparing to return.
They turned onto the road that led to Beth and Gabriel's farm, a winding two-lane route that Maggie remembered from previous visits. The houses grew farther apart, the lots larger, the sense of open space expanding with each mile. This was old New England, land that had been farmed for generations, stone walls and ancient oaks marking boundaries that predated the country itself.
“There it is,” Paolo said, slowing the car.
