“I never heard that story.”
“I was furious. He came home freezing. I told him he couldn’t possibly rescue every stranger he met.”
She looked at me.
“Do you know what he said?”
I answered quietly.
“You can’t make the whole world right, but you can make the next ten minutes better for somebody.”
Mom’s eyes filled.
“He told you that too?”
“All the time.”
She reached for her pencil.
“That stubborn man.”
I smiled.
“I know.”
“I miss him,” she whispered.
“Me too.”
I went to bed close to midnight.
But sleep wouldn’t come.
I stared at the stain on my ceiling, remembering how that woman had reacted to the picture.
It hadn’t looked like ordinary curiosity.
It looked like recognition.
But how could she possibly have known him?
Dad had been dead for twenty-two years.
She appeared to be in her mid-thirties.
She would have been a teenager when he died.
And she wasn’t from Millbrook.
I would have recognized her.
Maybe she’d simply been exhausted.
Maybe I’d imagined the entire thing.
Eventually, my thoughts drifted to the night Dad died.
The telephone ringing at two in the morning.
My mother’s voice changing when she answered.
The horrible silence afterward.
I remembered the funeral.
The truck drivers who traveled from several states to pay their respects.
Grown men standing quietly at the back of the church, tears rolling down their faces.
Then I remembered the watch.
After the accident, the police returned Dad’s belongings in a clear plastic bag.
His wallet.
Wedding ring.
Keys.
