“Do you think she’d have been proud of you?”
I looked down at her little smiling face.
“I hope so.”
Walter placed his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m certain of it.”
When I left that afternoon, I put Cathy’s photograph beside my family’s picture in the visor of my new truck.
I still carry both.
Sometimes, when I’m driving through Colorado and the snow starts falling, I think about that December morning.
I think about Walter standing beside the highway, waving his frozen hands.
I think about the broken engine, the job I lost, and the desperate journey to Denver.
But mostly, I think about my father telling me when I was young that a stranger had saved our lives because he chose not to drive past us.
For 35 years, I’d wanted to thank that man.
I never imagined I’d find him on the side of a snowy road.
This time, he was the one who needed someone to stop for him.