I was seventeen, old enough to taste freedom but still young enough to fear the quiet. The summer my family left for Canada without me, our house felt larger than it ever had—rooms echoing, clocks ticking too loudly, and nights stretching thin. They were supposed to be gone seven days. I worked mornings at a grocery store, came home to microwave dinners, and slept with the radio on for company. On the seventh day, a postcard arrived. It was addressed in my mother’s handwriting, cheerful and looping. She wrote that they had decided to stop in Vermont to visit friends and would return two days later than planned. I remember feeling oddly relieved, like the house itself had exhaled.

Those extra days passed slowly. I carried the postcard in my pocket, rereading it during breaks, grounding myself in the familiar curve of her words. When my family finally walked through the door two days later, they looked tired but happy—until they saw my face. I teased them about extending the trip without calling, holding up the postcard like proof. My father frowned. My siblings exchanged looks. My mother laughed at first, then stopped. She told me they hadn’t sent anything. No postcard. No Vermont stop. They had driven straight back from Canada, exactly as planned.

The room shifted. My mother swore the handwriting wasn’t hers. My father checked the stamp, the date, the postmark. It was real. It had arrived when I said it did. We searched the house together, opening drawers, flipping through trash, as if answers could hide in paper. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about how calm I had felt when the postcard arrived, how it had erased my loneliness. It hadn’t warned me. It hadn’t threatened me. It had comforted me. That, somehow, felt worse.