Brenda Heist wanted to run away from life. Naturally, she went to Key West, Fla.
The first time I was down there, I saw a highway sign that, for me, perfectly captured the meaning of that place. North, it said, with an arrow pointing the way.
No South, you understand. Just the one option: North. Not that I didn’t know where I was before I saw that, but it struck me as a visceral manifestation of what the little island represents. As the southernmost dot of inhabited land in the continental United States, it is the nation’s designated refuge for troubled or nonconformist souls. You end up there because running any farther (by land, at least) is a geographic impossibility. It is, literally, the end of the road.
So the news that Heist, the central Pennsylvania mother who disappeared 11 years ago, fled there, feels almost too on the nose. Of course she went to Key West. Of course she did.