Where The Heart Stayed

own off somewhere far away. I just didn't want to be the girl scanning airports for a woman in an a

d so was the girl who l

rst dates, who kept spare tights and deodorant in her desk drawer just in case (even if she hadn't needed them yet). The

lanced at the clock-8:30 p.m. I needed to leave before security made their rounds and ratted

ing, and headed for the elevator. Passing by the company's giveaway bookcase-stacks of extr

n travel: N

ould spend your whole life somewhere and still find surprises. For a split second, I thought she'd love a copy-but as I slipped it into my purse,

e subway and rode uptown, pulling out my phone on the familiar walk from the station to my a

ur father it's perfectly acceptable to m

's absolutely okay," I said, dodging around a

ince, "SEE, MARK! I told

he was picking up the phone from what I assumed was the kitchen.

bridge of my nose. Even though I'd been moved out since I was eighteen, Dad hated ch

ed, "But

y room into anything you want.

.. ?" M

at the sex dunge

, and then said,"Wel

all thirty-five years of their marriage, "Fine. You can

sh on the sidewalk. "Yo

ue vinyl house on Long Island anymore. Hadn't been for a while. But it also wasn't the apartment I was walking

I think Monique is retiring at the end of the summer,

s, sweetheart!" Mom cried.

gotta be a record! While, it took me eighteen

ight birthday, too!" Mom agreed happily.

ing the street to the block where my aunt's apartment w

He could always read me in this alarmi

you think she feels,

uestion, Marth

ch just couldn't seem to unknot itself. "I think I'll be more thrilled when I fin

help," Mom suggested. "I know my sister pr

most home. I'll talk to you later. Love you," I added, and hung up as I turned the corner and the towering building of the Monroe came into

leased in Greenpoint, I didn't have much of a choice, here was my aunt's apartment, sitting empty in one of the most sought-

m work that looked vaguely mid-century, winged lions chiseled into the eaves and placed at the entrance with missing ears and teeth, and a tired-looking greeter just inside the revolving doors. He'd bee

cried. "Wel

rl. How're you?

evators. My heart hurt a little, how familiar all of this was-how easy, how much it felt like home. The Monro

urled at the shoulders in the summer humidity, blunt bangs still looking like a 3:00 a.m. hack job done with kitchen scissors and heartbreak. The first time I stayed at my aunt's apartment, I was eigh

aces terrified me back then, but my parents thought I'd be better off spending the summer with my aunt while they moved us from Rhinebeck to L

, "That's your past self looking back at y

d too good to be true, a spark of something other in the mundane. A mirror that showed your past self, a pair of pigeons who never died, a book that wrote itself, an alleyway that led to t

y words. If my split-second-past me was shocked by the