There was so much to ask her, to tell her, but when he tried calling out to her, a cascade of sand poured from his mouth. Panic seized him. After so many years, this was a betrayal. She was too distracted and happy to notice him, her own baby, writhing at her feet. Then his baby giggled, too.

All of a sudden Henry was engulfed in the same flames from the hospital bed, when a nurse had first lowered Junior into his arms. A near weightless bundle, a feather boulder. From the baby’s lips to his toes, all his shrunken-down features were so irrefutably human, so terrifyingly fragile. Then four teensy monkey fingers had clamped around Henry’s index finger. Just like that, an ignition. The itchy gash on his scalp and the post-concussion fuzz were cleared by a great scalding, as a new and horrific knowledge seared over and through him like a bucketful of boiling tar. This love defied logic. It was beyond reason, obliterated self-interest. This blinding devotion to this itty-bitty person was absolute to a dangerous degree. In an instant, he learned of a horrifying capacity and total willingness to do anything—no matter how base or vicious—for another human being.

Ungreased metal on metal squealed. A rusty axle. At the horizon, pushing a wheelbarrow up a hill, was Papa. Whereas Mom, here and now, was a spring coiled tense with health and youth, Papa was weathered, old. Sunbaked hide sagging off a whittled frame, his black hair a charred bushel. Over the wheelbarrow’s brim dangled four limbs, pallid and porky. One of the wrists lifted, went to wipe snot dribbling down Al’s upper lip. He was still weeping, had probably never stopped. Still couldn’t bring himself to look Henry in the eyes. Neither Al nor Papa seemed to notice them in the meadow below. Instead, Papa pressed on, chugging the wheelbarrow to the hilltop, where a lavender fog had settled over its crest.

Once the mists swallowed Papa and Al, Mom finally peered down at Henry. Floating over Junior in her arms was that sad smile of hers. Seeing it almost felt like forgiveness.

She asked Henry if he would tell the baby about her.

More sand gushed over Henry’s tongue, so he nodded frantically—yes, yes, of course he would. So much to say, so much to ask, but the grains of sand coarsened, clumped, and now chunks of gravel splintered his teeth and shredded the roof of his mouth.

“Will you tell him about me?”