Family Travel / 1

When my aunt came back after twenty five years she gave me a plastic rock. The kind people hide keys in, except there wasn’t a key. Gale, the aunt I was sure I’d never see again: here she was. She was fragile and pale; she’d grown old. She kept forgetting which one was my husband and which one was my brother. Still, when everyone else had been led away and it was just the two of us she grew determined. “I have something to tell you,” she said. “You can throw the rock any time you want to.”