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I wanted to make things right for you, Sarah. I just didn’t know how to do it.

Joe had never been much for words when it came to asking for help. His simple, blunt request to God had come from desperation to save his family, not from any trust in prayer. Even though he believed in the existence of God, Joe’s life creed had always been: “Do the best you can, stand up for yourself, take life as it comes.”

God, I asked you for help, not more problems than I already had.

How could he trust a God who didn’t fix their lives the way Joe wanted them fixed?

What am I supposed to do? Who am I supposed to rely on now?

Things had changed in a moment.… Just like that, everything was different. He stood at a precipice, with two children who needed him, not knowing what to do and having nowhere to run.

He soberly realized that now he would never be able to reconcile with Sarah or have the life with her that he longed to have.

Mitchell sat wedged between Nona and Harold in the front seat, his wet feet straddling the hump and the Kleenex box, air blowing in his eyes from the vents, which made him squint. The inside of Harold’s car smelled funny, like dust and decaying foam rubber. When he tried to get comfortable, the seat scrunched beneath him like hay.

When Harold had hauled Mitchell into his arms at school, Mitchell couldn’t remember ever being held that tightly.

There were too many things to think about. Mitchell missed his mom. He wanted her right now, for her to cup his face in her hands and tell him everything would be okay. He didn’t want to think about what Harold had told him, that she had somehow gotten lost in the river and the firemen were trying to find her but they might not. It felt scary to be let out of school with all his friends still in Mrs. Georges’s class.

“Will Mrs. Georges tell them why I didn’t come back to class?”

Beside him, Nona had been blowing her nose. She rested a frayed tissue in her lap, inside the curl of her hand. Harold drove with both hands, his fingers clenched so hard around the steering wheel that his hand looked like a skeleton. Which made Mitchell shiver.

“She’ll tell them,” Harold said. “That’s what teachers are supposed to do.”

“Are we going to get Dad?” Mitchell asked.

“Your dad’s busy. We’re taking you to our house.”

In spite of the horrible events, Mitchell felt a sharp thrill at this idea. His friends had told him about spending weekends with their grandparents and being encouraged to do all sorts of interesting things. Lydia bragged about how her grandma let her try every flavor of syrup at IHOP. Ryan Thompson drew jagged-teeth pictures of stalactites and stalagmites and told everyone in class that his grandfather had taken him to explore a cave. Kyle Grimes went with his grandparents on a houseboat at the Lake of the Ozarks.

Mitchell couldn’t remember ever being alone with Harold and Nona. He never got invited to visit them without his mother coming along too. Mitchell couldn’t quite decide whether it was because Nona felt uncertain and awkward around him or because his mother wanted to protect him from something he didn’t understand.

“You want me to make something to eat?” Harold asked when they got to the house. “How about popcorn?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Something to drink? We’ve got Pepsi.”

“I’m not supposed to have soda. It rots my teeth.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“But you’re the oldest grown-up I know. So if you said it was okay, it probably would be.”

They perched at the kitchen table and, with the stealth of criminals, popped open a couple of cans. Harold guzzled his down. Mitchell traced the condensation on the can with a finger, trying to be brave. “Mama knows how to swim, you know.”

“Does she? She’s a good swimmer?”

“She used to be a lifeguard one time. She wanted to take Kate to Aqua-Tots this year, only she didn’t have time so Mrs. Pavik had to do it.”

“Mitchell. I—” Harold stopped. Pain snagged in his throat. A grown man trying to comfort a child, at a loss for words.

“When can I talk to Dad?”

“Anytime you’d like. Do you want to call him and tell him we got you here safe?”

Mitchell nodded, his bottom lip starting to quaver.

“Come on. I’ll dial his number for you. I’ll bet he wants to talk to you too.” Harold hoisted himself from the chair and headed for the landline. He dialed Joe’s number and handed the receiver to Mitchell.

“Dad?” Mitchell heard three rings and then the click. “Dad?” But no one answered, only voice mail.
I can’t come to the phone right now. If you’re trying to reach Harper’s Mazda Car-Care Clinic, please dial…

Mitchell wiped his runny nose with a shirtsleeve and waited for the beep. “I’m at Nona’s, and we got here fine. Will you call us, Dad? I want to talk to you.”

Harold produced a hankie from his pocket after he’d taken the phone from Mitchell. After that he invited Mitchell to come with him to the greenhouse. “You could dig around in the dirt out there. I have tomatoes that could sure use transplanting.”

Nona had told Mitchell plenty of times that she didn’t like him to get his hands dirty. So Mitchell shook his head even though Harold’s suggestion sounded like fun. Instead he went in search of his grandmother. He found her in her brocade chair, gripping a tissue in both fists directly below her chin. She’d worked the Kleenex with her thumbs until there wasn’t anything left of it, just a wad of shreds.

“Nona?”

It seemed a necessary thing: that a grandmother in a chair would reach toward a child who needed to be embraced. But Nona didn’t. She sat there, looking stricken, her limbs crimped tight against her, a cocooned butterfly unable to unfurl its wings. Mitchell’s throat tightened. He hated to admit it, but his grandmother frightened him.

“Do you like Mike and Ikes?” he asked timidly. He would try anything.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Those candies. They’re different colors and they’re shaped like pills and they get stuck in your teeth when you chew them.”

Her name had been Jane.
His mother had once told him this. Mitchell thought about that sometimes, how your name could change when you got older and somebody gave you a nickname and it just stuck.

“There’s lime and lemon and cherry and orange and strawberry. Do you know what your favorite color would be?” he asked. “I like green the best. But if you thought you’d like those best, I could save the green ones for you.”

She didn’t answer. She sat in the chair with her shoulders hunched forward to make herself smaller, as if she didn’t think it appropriate to take up so much room in her own chair.

“Or I could save another color for you if you’d like.”

When she pretended not to hear, pain squeezed his ribs. He inched closer, not knowing what else to do. He saw the picture frame of a young girl in her lap. “Who’s that, Nona?” Mitchell pressed closely against the chair. “Is that a picture of my mother?”

“Yes.” A whisper, faint as a breeze winnowing its way through the grass. “That’s her.”

Even though he wasn’t invited, Mitchell climbed into the chair with Nona, and for once she didn’t have the strength to push him away. “Can I see?”

Nona didn’t raise her head, but she handed the frame to him. Mitchell held it between two hands (his mom would be so proud of him because he hadn’t gotten his hands dirty today) and looked at the little girl’s face.

When he glanced up at Nona, she was staring at the girl’s face too. It surprised him that Nona didn’t look angry anymore; she just looked sad. Mitchell realized that Nona was feeling bad about his mom too. And even though she’d always acted bristly to him, even though he’d always been afraid of her, at that moment, Mitchell didn’t care. He laid his head against her bony shoulder.

The afghan in her lap folded to the floor unheeded, like ripples of cake batter, as he threaded his fingers into Nona’s hand.

Chapter Fourteen

I
t could be a fearful thing traveling with an angel, Sarah thought, even an angel whose forehead was covered by sparse hanks of hair (which occasionally lifted like a hinged lid on a teapot when he got caught by the Chicago breeze), who’d acquired his best pair of wingtip shoes from the clothing bin on LaSalle Street, whom God had relegated as the long-standing guardian of the Cubs.

They made an unlikely trio as they set off: Annie, the Christian grandma who had never stopped praying for the little granddaughter she’d adored. Wingtip, the angel who’d been inexplicably drawn to one small boy rooting for the Cubs in the bleacher section. And here she was too, given the gift of traveling with them, unable to turn back, not knowing what it meant to go forward. Not knowing why her heart felt so empty inside even when she’d had everything she ever thought she wanted.

It wasn’t like being lifted up and flying exactly. It was more like a hot-air balloon ride—at least that’s how Annie described it. A whoosh of warm air overhead (or maybe a whoosh of wings, she couldn’t be sure) while below them the bustling village of Buffalo Grove gently, silently, fell away. It was like watching Google Earth on the computer—the view widening as they rose, the rooftops growing smaller, the street layouts resembling the pattern on an Oriental rug, before Wingtip took their hands, waited for them to say they were ready and, together, they dipped toward the tilting world again.

It was night when they returned. Stars pinpricked a navy sky, so sharp they seemed like they were prickling Sarah’s skin. A gathering of teenagers caroused on a wooded rise overlooking town. Against the dark sky, tree limbs stood outstretched like a catcher’s glove, reaching to snag the ball of a moon.

Moonlight glanced off a row of car fenders. Somewhere down the line, a radio played. Johnny Rivers was singing “The Tracks of My Tears.”

Sarah gasped. “This is the night it happened, isn’t it?”

Why would anyone bring me here
? Sarah rounded on them, her fists knotted at her sides. “I thought God wanted me to look at
my
life, not my mother’s!”

Wingtip asked pointedly, “Isn’t this the night your life began?”

Resentment burst forth in Sarah the way an ember bursts into flame. “This part certainly isn’t important.”

“Isn’t it?” Annie asked. “She let it affect her entire life, and you have been doing the same thing.”

“But it wasn’t my decision, and I don’t understand why I have had to pay for it.
I
didn’t have anything to do with it.” The bitterness shone in Sarah’s eyes.