1884
At night, I stand alone on the grand expanse. The moonlight alternates an eerie glow with ribbed shadows on the giant steel cables, hurtling down toward me from the Brooklyn tower, running beside me for a bit, then arching back up to the other tower and on to Manhattan.
My hand grips a cold, wet railing as I peer skyward at clouds playing hide-and-seek with the moon. Ghosts of riggers sit on platforms high above, sharing a joke and a ham sandwich as they attach jail bars of suspension cables two hundred feet over the water. The wind howls and whips my dress against me, but there is no tremble in the steel beams underneath. Papa would be pleased.
The Great Bridge, they call it. A monument, a fortress, a miracle. Perhaps only I know its complete story, the struggle to build it, the sacrifices better left unknown. In a hundred years, there may be nothing here but a giant pile of stone, hardly a testament to the immense task—connecting a city ripped in two by a churning river. Then again, maybe the bridge will still be standing proud, towers in the mist, travelers crossing by the thousands.
There is one thing left to do before leaving. The little girls have given me a ring of flowers, a chain of daisies they picked from the little spot of undisturbed earth beneath the bridge. I finger the twists of the slim green stems, the velvety white petals. Children watched as their homes were destroyed, watched as workers retched and collapsed. Maybe some of them lost their own fathers. Yet they give me flowers in thanks. They humble me.
An image: Elizabeth and me, picking dandelions and daisies, tiny bouquets for our mother in our little fists. “I forgive you,” she says. She holds out her bouquet to me, her other hand brushing aside her golden curls.
“For the fight? For pushing you?”
She smiles, shakes her head, her eyes matching the sky. I’m five years old, running along the riverbank, panting, knees bobbing up and down, gravel crunching under my wet shoes. Tall grasses whip me. I push, push through along the river. Up ahead, a dark form. It climbs out of the water. A baby bear. No. It crawls on hands and knees, dripping, its head sagging, lower. It collapses, flattens onto the shore. I run, closer now. Not a bear. A brown shirt. Dark hair. I reach him, throw myself onto him.
It is my brother who survived.
And I am glad it’s him.
My sister’s gentle voice: “I forgive you.” She presses the blossoms into my hand. “Forgive yourself.”
The daisy chain is soft and fresh and sweet when I press my nose into it.
Forgiveness seeps into my healing heart.
I toss the flower ring into the abyss.