I didn’t expect the worst moment of my year to arrive between a baggage scale and a line of strangers arguing about sunscreen, but that’s where it happened.

One second I was thinking about boarding groups and seat numbers, and the next, “Mom, they need my passport,” Ellie whispered and handed me an empty case.

Ellie is my 9-year-old.

She’s the kind of kid who tries her hardest at everything, even when she’s scared.

And she was so proud of being responsible for her own passport.

She’d been rehearsing this trip for weeks in her head, her big adventure, as she called it.

But none of that mattered at the moment her passport case opened like a magician’s trick with no punchline.

Nothing inside.

I blinked, checked again.

Nothing.

“Mom.” Ellie’s voice cracked. “It was in there. I put it in myself. I did.”

My heart dropped so fast I felt dizzy.

Behind us, my mother-in-law, Carol, leaned on her rolling suitcase and stared with the detached interest of someone watching a stranger assemble IKEA furniture incorrectly.

Next to her was her husband, George, who looked perpetually inconvenienced by the existence of other people.

Somewhere ahead, my sister-in-law Janelle, Brian’s golden, faultless sister, was herding her two boys through the security line like they were VIPs at an amusement park.

We were flying to Cancun.

International flight.

Passport required.

My stomach was already braced for airport chaos.

I hadn’t planned on bracing for this.

“We’ll find it,” I told Ellie, even though the words tasted like a lie.

We emptied her backpack.

No passport.

Checked her jacket.