Page 60 of The Strawberry Field
She looks up at me again.“I remember you. After the wreck. You helped me breathe.”
“Yes,” I say, my throat tight.“That’s right.”
“Did you see my grandma?”
The question slices through me. I freeze. Jake steps forward, his hand on my back.
“Hi, Hannah,” he says, emotion roughening his voice. “We did.”
“Did you try to help her?”
“We wanted to. Very much.”
“I saw the truck,” she says.“Grandma tried to get out of the way, but it was too late. It hit us.”
“I know,” I say.“We were right behind you. There was nothing she could have done. But I’m certain her quick thinking saved your life.”
She’s quiet for a moment, processing. Then tears begin to slide down her cheeks.
“I don’t want to be here without her.”
Her shoulders tremble, her lip quivers. The sobs come quietly, shaking her small frame. I ache to climb into the bed beside her, to wrap her in my arms.
“Sometimes,” I say, kneeling beside the bed,“the people we love have to go on before us. And it’s the hardest thing in the world. I understand. I lost my brother when I was young.”
She watches me with wide, solemn eyes, as though she’s trying to understand something she doesn’t yet have the words for.
“So where will I go?” she whispers, her eyes wide.“I don’t have anyone else.”
The question breaks me open. I don’t know the answer.
“You’re not alone, Hannah,” I say.“I promise. We won’t let you be alone.”
There’s a long pause. She studies me, really studies me, as if weighing whether she can believe those words. Then her fingers curl slowly around mine.
“Did your brother have blonde hair like you?” she asks, her voice small.
I blink, caught off guard, but moved.
“He did,” I say softly.“And kind eyes. Like yours.”
Something in her eyes shifts as she curls her fingers around mine.
She’s reaching out from inside her sorrow.
The tiniest evidence. But enough.
And I know this: I will not let her disappear into a system that doesn’t know her name, her laugh, or her grief. I won’t. I can’t.
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
—Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jake
WE’RE BOTH QUIET for the first stretch of the drive back to the lake, the silence filled with the weight of the morning.
