It Is So Easy To Presume That

Most People Who Offer Their Help Do It To Make Themselves Feel Better, Not Us. To Be Honest, I Don't Blame Them. It's Superstition: If You Give Assistance To The Family In Need... If You Throw Salt Over Your Shoulder... If You Don't Step On The Cracks, Then Maybe You'll Be Immune. Maybe You'll Be Able To Convince Yourself That This Could Never Happen To You.

Like Connor, Alex Protected Me -and He Was The Only Person I Let Close Enough To Do It. Like Connor, Alex Could Finish My Sentences Before I Did. But Unlike Connor, For Whom I Had Ultimately Come Too Late, I Was Just In Time To Take Care Of Alex.

What Makes You Walk Past Thirty-thousand People Without A Second Glance, And Then You Look At The Thirty-thousandth-and-first Person And Know You'll Never Take Your Eyes Off Her Again?

Maybe I Was Naïve To Think That Silence Was Implicit Complacence, Instead Of A Festering Question. Maybe I Was Silly To Believe That Friends Owed Each Other Anything.

I Wonder If Other Mothers Feel A Tug At Their Insides, Watching Their Children Grow Up Into The People They Themselves Wanted So Badly To Be.