Burlington Airport was some thirty miles from Northfield, Vermont, but it was the closest airport to my former hometown. I arrived just before one o’clock a week later.
I decided, as I stepped off the plane and down the long passenger ramp leading into the airport, that agreeing to return to Vermont had been a mistake.
You can’t go home again.
Or you shouldn’t anyway. I shouldn’t. My stomach had turned queasy, and I was pretty sure I might throw up. Although maybe I was overreacting. Chances that the same people I’d known in Northfield as a boy still lived there had to be pretty small. And one particular resident probably even less of a chance. Or that’s what I told myself.
Still, I eyed the garbage cans in the airport as I followed the BAGGAGE CLAIM signs. And then I had a moment wher
