She glanced toward Thomas.
“When you picked him up, I was so afraid you’d put him down and try to lift me again.”
Her voice trembled.
“I needed you to keep going.”
Grandma bowed her head.
“I left you there.”
“You took my boy out.”
The mother lifted Grandma’s chin.
“And because you did, I got to watch him grow up.”
Thomas stood beside them, wiping his eyes.
His mother smiled at him.
“I watched him finish school. I watched him get married. I held his babies.”
She looked back at Grandma.
“Those are years I thought I might lose.”
Grandma held her hand against her cheek.
For 67 years, she had remembered a woman disappearing into smoke.
Now that woman was sitting in front of her.
Alive.
Holding her hand.
Thomas opened a small photograph album.
He sat beside Grandma and turned to a picture of a little boy holding a schoolbag.
