“Yes.”
Jonah stood quietly beside me.
“Were you scared?”
“Very.”
“What did you do?”
I looked toward the place where Ruth’s blue minivan had stopped all those years earlier.
“I asked someone for help.”
Gabriel wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“That was brave.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“Brave came afterward.”
“Brave was building a life once I got into her car.”
We placed a bouquet of yellow flowers beside the old fuel pump.
Not because Ruth had died.
Because she had lived exactly the way she believed everyone should live…
Watching the road for people who had been left behind.
As we walked back toward our car, another vehicle pulled into the abandoned station.
A young woman sat behind the wheel crying.
A suitcase rested on the passenger seat.
Gabriel looked at me.
I already knew.
I walked toward her.
“Are you all right?”
She wiped her eyes.
