—OK, great. Why don’t you be the doctor and the pastor and everyone else in the whole wide world?

Umma, her doctor, me, and everyone else in the whole wide world knew that she didn’t have much time left. She said she didn’t want an apple, she wanted to see the reservoir again. When I got up to get the wheelchair, she grew irritable and insisted she would walk on her own.

Ten minutes was all it took to get her exhausted. Her fierceness from just moments before had evaporated, and now here she was, bleating at me to find us a place to rest. We sat down, as always, at a bench near the reservoir. Umma breathed deeply and placed a hand on my leg. The many needles required for her treatment had made the veins on the back of her hand red. Her skin was like cardboard, like old leaves that would crumble when touched. She took out a note from her pocket and handed it to me.

Just as I care for you, the Lord also cares for you.

Jesus, Umma, you’ve sure got your priorities straight, why accept my pity when there’s a chance to annoy me instead?

My eyes kept wandering around the reservoir. Whenever Umma stopped to catch her breath, I found myself taking a moment to glance around us, looking carefully at the faces of each passerby. It was so pathetic that I almost laughed at myself. I wondered what I would say if he did show up. Would I introduce him to Umma as if nothing had happened? Would I say I was glad to see him? Or would I ignore him and pass him by? Ridiculous to think that I could miss him. Any six-foot-four-inch giant standing around that lake was going to stick out like a sore thumb.

I had changed my phone number after I became a writer. There wasn’t some big deal behind the decision—I just wanted my life to be a little different from the way it had been before I got published. A few clicks, and I had a new number. It would be a lie if I said I never thought of his number. It began with the numbers 010-81, but the other digits have long faded from memory. Still, I couldn’t shake that feeling of having fought against something and lost. My hoping to forget his number in itself was just a forced, unnatural effort in the end. I didn’t know what I truly wanted all this time, what I’d really been waiting for.

Umma and I sat down on the benches near the grass where the weird sculptures stood. It was the place where he and I were supposed to have met five years ago, the sculpture park. The more I tried to push him out of my mind, the more I kept thinking about him. He’d be standing there once I turned my head; I was sure of it. Why was I being such an idiot? Then I remembered the thick envelope in the backpack slung over my shoulder. The stack of pages didn’t feel like paper but like something as heavy as a brick or a dumbbell.