He was holding a red toy truck with one missing wheel.
The woman held a worn green book against her chest.
She looked nervous.
“Are you Weston’s mother?”
“Yes.”
She glanced down at the little boy beside her.
“My name is Sloane.”
“Are you Weston’s mother?”
I caught the edge of the door.
“Sloane?”
She nodded.
The little boy looked up at her.
“Mommy, is this the lady?”
“Yes, Charlie.”
I couldn’t stop staring.
“Mommy, is this the lady?”
The last time I’d seen Sloane, she’d been seven years old, clutching a book at my son’s funeral.
Now she was standing on my porch with a child of her own.
“I should’ve come here years ago,” she said.
“Oh, honey.”
“I should’ve come here years ago.”
She looked at me again.
“Your son wasn’t at that river by accident. I need to tell you the truth.”
I held on to the doorframe.
“What are you talking about?”
“I need to tell you the truth.”
Sloane looked down at her son.
Then she said something I’d never expected.
“Weston came there to meet me.”
I invited them inside.
She said something I’d never expected.
Charlie carried an old wooden train from my bookshelf to the rug while Sloane sat across from me.
“Did Weston know you were going to be at the river?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Did he know something was going to happen?”
“Did Weston know you were going to be at the river?”
“No.” She shook her head quickly. “Nothing like that. We were supposed to read together.”
I stared.
“Read?”
“We were supposed to read together.”
Sloane placed the book on her lap.
Its green cover had faded, and one corner had been repaired with yellowing tape.
“I knew your son before the accident.”
One corner had been repaired with yellowing tape.
That summer, Weston had volunteered at a children’s reading program at the community center.
Sloane’s parents had met him at pickup and knew he sometimes read with her after the group sessions.
He’d mentioned helping some children, but I hadn’t known how often he went.
Weston had volunteered at a children’s reading program.
“I was terrible at reading aloud,” Sloane recalled.
“You were only seven.”
“I knew the other kids were better.”
She rubbed the book’s worn spine.
“When I got stuck on a word, people would usually say it for me. They meant well, but I hated it.”
“I was terrible at reading aloud.”
“And Weston?”
“He waited.” She smiled faintly. “Sometimes I’d sit there staring at one word forever. He’d just wait until I tried.”
I looked down at my hands.
Weston used to do that with me.
“He’d just wait until I tried.”
Whenever I couldn’t remember somebody’s name, he’d wait instead of guessing.
It drove me crazy.
“He could be stubborn,” I said.
Sloane laughed.
“He really could.”
It drove me crazy.
She told me the reading program had ended a few days before the accident.
Weston was preparing to leave for college.
But Sloane hadn’t finished her favorite book.
“On the last day, I got upset,” she said. “I thought he’d leave before I could read the ending.”
Weston was preparing to leave for college.
“What did he say?”
“He told me we’d find another afternoon. I said my parents were taking me to the riverside park that Saturday. He knew the place. He told me he’d come and listen to the last pages.”
“And?”
“He told me we’d find another afternoon.”
She looked down at the book.
“I didn’t tell my parents. I wanted to surprise them when they saw how much I could read.”
Weston had arrived before the picnic began.
Sloane’s parents were unloading their picnic things when she wandered toward the water.
“I didn’t tell my parents.”
“I dropped something near the edge,” she recounted. “I bent down to get it.”
I watched her hands tighten around the book.
“My foot slipped.”
She stopped.
I didn’t ask her to continue.
“My foot slipped.”
