I laughed.
WINONA: He was a philosopher.
MITCHELL: What did he say?
WINONA: He said something like, maybe don’t close the door completely on things that make you happy. Sometimes life can surprise you if you look for lightness. On the breath of a dragon’s wing.
MITCHELL: Okay, first of all, he did not say that last line. The line is, “On the breath of wind from a dragon’s wing.”
I readjustedFelled by a Scaled Wingunder my arm, smiling.
WINONA: You didn’t tell me it was 1500 pages.
MITCHELL: Each one a masterpiece.
MITCHELL: But tell me more about this guy and what he said. I promise I didn’t pay him to be there.
We hadn’t talked since the day after Mitchell had left. I’d told him it would be too hard. But now, going back and forth with the man I loved, it was like we weren’t on opposite sides of the globe and a week of agony hadn’t just passed. And I realized how right that boy had been.
CHAPTER 34
A New Page
MITCHELL
An icy gale swirled wet brown leaves around the cemetery as Conrad and I headed back to the car.
Up ahead, Artie skipped along between Blake and Cassandra.
“Kind of good he didn’t know him, hey?” I asked Conrad.
“Made for a confusing funeral though,” my brother said. “We had a big talk about how Grandpa wasn’t a nice man, and then there we were, all sobbing our faces off.”
“I wouldn’t call it sobbing.”
Conrad slanted a look at me. His auburn hair whipped around in the wind. “Okay. I sobbed.”
“How’s he doing?” I asked, eyes on Artie again.
“Not great, honestly. He’s been asking about Suzette. I think he’s getting picked on at school, but they keep brushing me off. And between the hours I keep…” Conrad rubbed the top of his head. “It’s been rough, honestly. This is a fitting way to end a shitty year.”
Conrad was a firefighter. He was his son’s hero, but he struggled with the hours away as a single dad.
“What did you think, Mom?” I asked, bending down pastmy hands on the handle of her wheelchair so she could hear me.
“She’s a little disorientated,” her worker said from up ahead. “Maybe wait until we’re buckled back in to ask confusing questions?”
Conrad raised his eyebrows at me as the worker turned around. She was great. Took no shit from anyone, even us.
“Well, just to add to the confusion, I wanted to ask what you thought of Vermont.”
Mom angled her head back. She looked at me strangely, but smiled. “Vermont is beautiful. I thought I’d live there once.”
Conrad and I exchanged a look. I wondered if that was true. If it was, it felt like a staggeringly good omen.
I glanced over at Conrad. “I’d be curious what you thought, too.”
Conrad fully stopped walking. “No. I don’t want you moving Mom.”
