For sixteen years, I believed my daughter’s disappearance had left me with nothing but questions.
Then, on a hot summer afternoon, I saw a cream-colored beach bag hanging from a stranger’s shoulder.
Before I even noticed the scratched brass keychain swinging from its strap, I knew that bag.
I had made it myself
And suddenly, the past I had spent sixteen years trying to survive was no longer buried.
Gia was seventeen when she walked out of our house.
The last words I ever said to her were, “Then go. See how far you get.”
I have hated that sentence ever since.
I hated the coldness of it. The pride. The certainty that she would come back.
Because that was what I expected.
I thought she would storm down the street, cool off for twenty minutes, then return with that stubborn look on her face.
Instead, she disappeared.
That afternoon, she stood in our doorway carrying the beach bag I had knitted for her that spring.
Cream-colored yarn.
One crooked handle.
A row of uneven stitches near the bottom where I had made a mistake and tried unsuccessfully to fix it.
When I gave it to her, she laughed.
“It looks homemade.”
“It is homemade.”
“No, Mom. I mean really homemade.”
She grinned.
I threw a dish towel at her.
After that, she carried the bag everywhere.
Attached to one strap was a little brass keychain she had owned since she was six.
It was scratched, dull, and practically worthless, but Gia transferred it from backpack to purse to beach bag for years.
I never knew why she kept it.
Maybe kids hold onto things for reasons they can’t explain.
Maybe mothers do too.
