For eighteen years, I’d pictured my son walking past the river and seeing a child in trouble.
“I never told anyone that part.”
Now I pictured him arriving with time to spare, looking for a little girl who wanted to finish her book.
He hadn’t gone there expecting to save anyone. He’d gone because he’d told her he would come.
***
Sloane opened the book.
“There’s something else.”
He hadn’t gone there expecting to save anyone.
Inside the front cover was Weston’s handwriting.
For Sloane. Save the last page for me.
I reached for my glasses.
I knew that handwriting.
The uneven letters.
I knew that handwriting.
The way he always made his capital S too large.
I touched the
page.
“He wrote this?”
She nodded.
“I brought it to the funeral. I wanted to show you, but I couldn’t talk.”
I touched the page.
I remembered the little girl in the blue dress.
The book pressed against her chest.
“Oh, Sloane.”
“I kept it all these years,” she whispered.
“Did you ever finish reading it?”
I remembered the little girl in the blue dress.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Much later.” She looked down. “For a long time, I couldn’t open it. Then one day, I wanted to know how it ended.”
I nodded.
That seemed like a perfectly good reason.
“Then one day, I wanted to know how it ended.”
Charlie quietly turned one of the wooden train cars over in his hands.
I looked at Sloane.
“Why now?”
She took a moment to answer.
“Why now?”
“My parents moved because they thought it would help me forget. But I didn’t
forget. I just stopped talking about it. I wrote you letters over the years, but I never sent them. I didn’t know whether coming here would hurt you.”
“It might have,” I admitted.
“I didn’t forget.”
She nodded.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
Then she glanced toward Charlie.
“A few weeks ago, he started asking about the people in our family. Grandparents. Cousins. People who’ve died.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
