The four of us came to a particular place where the corn was high in one field but had been harvested on the other side of the road. That side was actually a gradual hill, and I could see at the top of that narrow ridge the distant lights of my own house: the front porch light, which my parents left on whenever I wasn’t home, and the kitchen light, shining through the one window.

I stopped. The other three stopped too.

“What’s up?” Tom asked.

“Well,” I said, “we can keep taking the road. It goes up that way.” I pointed into the night. “Or we can cut through the field.”

“It’s not muddy, right?” Shirley asked.

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. It had been a dry fall. The cornstalks in the field beside us rustled loud and raspy.

“What do you think?” Tom asked. “It’s your house.”

I shrugged. “It’s a lot quicker cutting through. A little dirtier. There’s a narrow stream we’ll have to hop. Besides that, easy as pie.”

I glanced around. It was hard to read everyone’s expressions in the dark. Shirley laughed. She was almost always laughing at something. But this laugh sounded nervous.

“Onward,” Tom said, making a large sweeping motion with his arms, beckoning me to lead the way through the field.

So I did. We left the road.

What if we hadn’t?

My Own Flesh and Blood

Grampy! Your tea is getting cold again.”

I raise the small, empty plastic cup to my lips and take a long drink. “That is delicious,” I say with a smile.

You look at me with sincere eyes. Those eyes. They’re so expressive, so open to the world and eager for whatever it might have for you. I worry for the one thousandth time about you, about what will happen with no one here to care for you. No one here to find you when you run away, no one here to drink your tea or hear your stories or read your maps.

That is why we’re going back. That is why I have to take you there. There must be someone where I grew up who can watch over you. My parents are gone. My friends, the few I had, are as old as me. But there has to be someone.

For a brief moment, I think about your father. My little boy. Where is he?

How he has failed you. The depth and width and breadth of that failure are a weight on me. It would be so much easier for me to leave if he had not fallen apart, if he had not left you with me. I think of him a million times a day. I think if he had died, I would know, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I feel it in my bones? My own flesh and blood couldn’t pass away without me knowing it any more than I could lose a finger or chop off a toe without noticing. Right?