Like flying.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I laughed out loud, at the top of the swing, with the oak leaves blazing red and orange above me and my hands holding tight to the chains.
When I came back down, I looked over my shoulder.
Nigel was standing there with both hands over his face, crying so hard his shoulders were shaking.
I got off the swing.
I walked over to him. I took his hands down from his face, gently.
And I looked at him. The scar. The tired eyes. The crooked nose. The gray at his temples.
The eight-year-old boy who wrote a letter he never sent.
The man who kept the promise in it.
“Hey, Frankenstein,” I said.
He made a sound that was half laugh and half sob.
“You remembered,” he said.
“I remember everything now,” I said. “That’s the problem. And that’s the gift.”
