When the Amtrak train arrived from Chicago, I stood on the platform anxiously watching as passengers began to exit. At twenty-six, I was there to meet my grandmother for the first time. I expected her to be tall, like me, and saw a stately woman in a long red coat moving along with the crowd. I headed toward her, thrilled to be meeting a biological relative at last, and then heard someone call my name. Turning around, I saw a tiny, white-haired woman. I had walked right past her. “I knew you immediately,” she said. “You have your grandfather’s chin.”
Hilary Harper’s writing has appeared in Connecticut River Review and Clackamas Literary Review, among other publications. She lives halfway between Detroit and Chicago.