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“Then what?”
Bradley sniffles and blinks away his tears. “She brung me home. I tried to get her to come into the house, but she said she couldn’t go no further. I told her my mommy would want to talk to her.”
“What did she say to that?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I think it made her sad, ’cause she started to cry. Then she said to give this to Mom.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls something out.
I stare down at the object in my son’s hand and feel suddenly as if I am falling. Behind me, I hear cars rolling down the street, the tires squealing on the slick pavement. But it seems light-years away as I stare at the tiny misshapen pottery heart in my son’s tiny palm. I can see the thumbprint, still as clear as day, made so many years ago in art class.
Remember? A voice whispers inside me. Remember how little your thumb was? And suddenly I can smell it, a whiff of Pert shampoo and Estée Lauder perfume. In the leaves overhead I hear a rustle of sound, and it sounds achingly like my mother’s laugh.
“What in the—”
I cut Ryan off. “Did she say anything else?”
Bradley gives me a shrug. “No—oh, yeah. She said to tell you that she got to hold my hand.”
“April?” Ryan asks, touching my shoulder.
I stand up and look around, down the rain-slicked streets, searching the shadows for one that is familiar. Mom? When I see nothing, I close my eyes and draw up images, the ones I’ve kept inside glass for so long. Surprisingly, they don’t shatter and break and cut me with their sharp edges. The one that is clearest is of my thirteenth birthday party, when she carried a pink cake into the dining room. The other, darker images of her last days feel as far away as another continent.
I love you, Mom.
The leaves answer me, a whisper-soft sound that will stay with me for the rest of my life. In their sandpapery dry echo, I hear her voice, the voice I’ve longed to hear for years. I only wanted you to be happy.
I know.
“April?” Ryan says my name softly, but I can’t answer, not now when I am laughing and crying at the same time. I hold on to their hands, my husband’s and my son’s, and in the warm press of their flesh, I feel connected and complete. I am a twenty-seven-year-old housewife with no formal education, living in a house that was put together in a factory somewhere, and yet I know now that it is more than enough. It is everything.
St. Martin’s Press
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. ALL OF THE CHARACTERS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND EVENTS PORTRAYED IN THIS STORY ARE EITHER PRODUCTS OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FICTITIOUSLY.
“The Glass Case.”
Copyright © 1998 by Kristin Hannah.
First published by Signet, an imprint of Dutton NAL, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. in MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS, Celebrating the Gift of Love with 12 New Stories. Copyright @ Jill Morgan, Martin H. Greenberg, and Robert Weinberg, 1998.
All rights reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-0314-5
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