In an Instant(64)

Mo slumps in her seat, exhausted. “How did you know which way to walk?” she says.

“Mrs. Miller,” he says. “She was amazing. I still don’t know how she did it, but somehow she knew which way we needed to go. When I think back on it, I wonder how we did it, made it out of there. I mean, we had no food, no water, and it was freezing. We had no idea if we were going the right way, and we kept hitting dead ends. I remember thinking it was impossible, but then I’d look back at Mrs. Miller, and I’d think if she could keep going, so could I. And . . .” He stops, leans back, shakes his head, and smiles.

“And what?”

He huff laughs through his nose. “And I just kept thinking about you and those ridiculous boots you were wearing.”

“My boots?”

He smiles a wide, toothless grin. “Yep. Like you were off to a concert or something, with that shiny leather and the heels.”

Mo blushes. “I’ll have you know those were Prada boots.”

“Yeah, well, anyways, that’s what I kept thinking about. How ridiculous they were, and how cold your feet must have been, and so I knew I couldn’t stop, that no matter what, I had to keep going.”

My whole nonbody lights up, Fourth of July fireworks going off everywhere. Mo feels it as well. What girl wouldn’t? The guy hiked through a blizzard to save her, propelled by his concern for her freezing feet in her ridiculous boots.

Mo lifts one of her Sorels. “Better?”

“Much. Very sexy.”

Mo throws her napkin at him, and he bats it away with a sweet laugh that is very becoming. Everything he does now is very becoming. He could blow his nose, and I would think it was sexy.

“So now that you’ve gotten what you came for,” Kyle says, “are you done with me?”

“I would be,” Mo says, “except you’re lying.”

Kyle squints and tilts his head.

“What happened that you’re not telling me?”

“I told you everything,” Kyle says, squirming with a conscience that doesn’t allow him to lie often or easily, making me like him even more.

“You told me almost everything,” Mo corrects. “Something happened that Mrs. Miller is having a tough time with.”

“She lost two of her kids.”

“That’s not it. Something happened that has nothing to do with Finn or Oz. I thanked her for what she did, and she freaked out. I thought she was going to slap me. And you’re a terrible liar. So what happened?”

“It was nothing,” Kyle says.

“Not to her.”

“I’m telling you, it was no big deal.”

She frowns at him, and he runs his hand through his hair, leans forward, leans back, then sets his mouth in a firm line. “It was nothing,” he repeats, then adds, “some things . . . they’re not . . . it’s not worth talking about. We all did what we had to that day,” and the harshness of his words destroys her. Her head shakes, and her chin drops to her chest as fresh tears fall from her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice pitching high with instant regret. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s not you,” she manages. “It’s all of it. I hate it. I hate what that day did to us. And I thought I could do this”—her eyes slide to the snow through the window—“but being here and remembering . . .”

Kyle reaches over and takes her hands again. Then he brings them to his lips and blows warm breath on her fingertips.

She lifts her teary face to his. “Are you going to do that every time I remember?”

“Every time,” he answers.

“You don’t even know me,” Mo says. But even she knows the words are wrong. More was revealed in that single tragic night than most people reveal in a lifetime.





75

My mom runs until she cannot catch a breath, then stumbles to a stop and bends over, gasping for air. It’s late afternoon, and she is alone. Beyond the golf course, homes sparkle with life: families with husbands and wives and children, doing all the wonderful things that families with husbands and wives and children do.

The tremor begins as a small hiccup that causes her shoulders to jerk. Then, like a ripple, the spasm grows, turning my mom’s body liquid, the bones melting as she sinks to the cold, hard sidewalk.

A man with a dog, midfifties and fit like a marathoner, jogs over the rise, sees my mom, and quickens his pace. “You okay?” he asks when he reaches her.

“How do I get past it?” she mumbles, not necessarily to him. Hate. Hurt. Guilt. And grief. So much of it that I feel its thickness and its weight, like she is drowning and can’t breathe.

“A single step at a time,” the man says, speaking from some profound experience of his own and with deep understanding, making me wonder if all pain might be the same regardless of its origin. “You’re still here,” he goes on. “So there’s not really a choice. An inch, a foot, not necessarily in the right direction, but onward nonetheless.”

My mom shudders a deep breath, looks up at him.

“Until eventually,” he says, “the present becomes the past, and you are somewhere else altogether, hopefully in a better place than you are today.”

My mom bends her head again and nods, and the man straightens and continues on. And I am so grateful I send a prayer to God to witness this man’s kindness and to grace him in some way. And as I watch him jog away, I think that in some ways this perspective is not so bad and that, sometimes, humans surprise you.