The Return Ticket

Mara found the ticket in a novel she'd bought second-hand — not a train ticket, but a bus stub dated ten years earlier. The stop was hers. She'd moved away at eighteen and swore she'd never look back. That evening she rode the same route. Same cracked vinyl seats. Same smell of rain and diesel. At the end of the line the driver nodded as if he'd been expecting her. "You can get off here," he said, "or you can ride again." She kept the stub in her wallet. Some stories, she thought, are round trips.