May always said we were angels before we were ever people. She said when we were finished being people we’d go back to being angels. And we’d never feel pain again.

But what is it that makes a person want to stay here on this earth anyway, and go on suffering the most awful pain just for the sake of getting to stay?

I used to think it was because people fear death. But now I think it is because people can’t bear saying good-bye.

May was lucky. When she had to say her good-bye to Ob, she had to hurt over it only once. And then she was an angel and it didn’t hurt her anymore.

But Ob. Ob hurt and he kept on hurting. Living in a trailer full of May’s empty spaces. Walking through May’s dying garden. Sleeping in a bed that still left room for her.

He hurt so much. But even after his most terrible hours, he decided to stay here on this earth. Right out of the blue, he wanted to live again. And I’d like to think maybe he wanted to live because of me. Because he couldn’t bear the thought of saying good-bye to me.

Something happened to Ob that day we left Putnam County and started back for home. Between the front porch of the late Reverend Young’s and the concrete steps of the West Virginia State Capitol, something happened to Ob to make him long for living again. I don’t know what it was. I couldn’t even take any credit for making it happen when it did. I figured Ob had given up there on that porch in Putnam County and I was preparing myself for the worst. But something happened to Ob. He turned that buggy around.

The three of us found an easy place to park right beside the capitol building and we got out of the car and walked into that place like three people coming home. We didn’t feel small. We didn’t mind that we were new. We felt embraced and even sort of expected.

Cletus seemed to need to touch everything. Even when we walked down the halls, he’d run his fingers lightly against the walls. We stopped at every lighted display window. We read the name on every door. We picked up every brochure. And Cletus smiled at each person we passed as if he knew everyone well.

And all this time Ob was gentle with him and with me, gentle like a mother. He would lean with Cletus over a glass case in the museum, and his arm would lie softly about Cletus’s shoulders as they read the words off an old yellowed newspaper. And while I stood in front of a beautiful window, looking out at the capitol lawn with its pigeons and squirrels and pretty women walking together and laughing, Ob would stand beside me and rest his palm against the back of my head as he used to when I was a little girl.

In the capitol coffee shop we looked for signs of the governor, but I guess he was off somewhere else that day. So we just eavesdropped on the conversations of all the other men and women in their nice suits, people who had come downstairs from their big offices with leather chairs to have a cup of capitol coffee and relax. Cletus watched them with a kind of ache in his eyes, and I knew what he wanted for his life and I prayed for him to someday get it. But I didn’t say any prayers for me. I was too afraid to hope for things.

We went through every bit of space in the capitol building that we could find; then we went next door to the Science and Culture Center and soaked in all of that place, too. There was a gift shop there selling handmade items by West Virginians, and it was Cletus who said that Ob ought to be bringing in his whirligigs to sell. I could see that Ob actually gave it some thought. He looked around the shop like somebody planning out a garden they’re about to plant. He’d stare at one corner, then another, like he was setting up his whirligigs there, in his head, getting the feel of it.

But when we walked out of the shop, Ob said to Cletus, “My ’gigs are needing a place. This ain’t it.”

We stayed among the senators and legislators until five o’clock, and when they started heading out to their cars to go home, we called the Glen Meadows Motel to cancel; then we headed on out to ours. I gave Cletus the front seat.

It was dark when we finally pulled into the yard, the headlights of the car flashing across Ob’s old Chevy sitting in the weeds. We’d been quiet all the way home, but not a hard, lonely quiet. Just tired. Full of thoughts.

We were getting ourselves and our stuff out of the car. Ob was talking to Cletus about how comfy the couch was to sleep on (Ob had asked Cletus to spend the night so we wouldn’t have to answer any awkward questions from Cletus’s parents). And I was thinking of May.

Then something flew over me.

We all let out a little gasp. The wings were so completely silent and we so unprepared. But the moon was bright and the shadow of those wings so real, and before we could find our voices, before I could call out, “Wait!” the owl had flown off into the night.

I remembered her then. I remembered May.

I began to cry. I had not ever really cried for May. I had tried so hard to bear her loss and had swallowed back the tears that had been building up inside me for two seasons. But nothing could keep them back once that owl disappeared from my eyes and I knew as I had never known before that I would never, ever, see May on this earth again.

I cried and cried and could not stop crying. Then Ob lifted me up and carried me through the door Cletus held open and he took me to my room as he had done so many times when I was a little girl. My stomach and my throat burned and ached with the tears as I curled into a ball on my bed and tried to cry the very life out of my body. But for every bit of life I cried away, Ob held me hard against him and he put more life back in me. He did not ever speak. Just held on to me and wiped away the tears with his strong, wide hands until finally my body was emptied of those tears and I was no more burdened.

When finally I felt I could speak, I whispered to him, “It’s been so hard missing May.”

And Ob said, “She’s still here, honey. People don’t ever leave us for good.”

I laid my head on his shoulder, so grateful he was still here with me, grateful even for Cletus, who I knew was somewhere in the trailer, waiting. I closed my eyes and thought of my poor young mama and May’s poor mommy and daddy and my dear May herself. But I didn’t dwell on them with pain or with fear. There was a tranquillity in me that felt all right, and as I remembered them all, my tears dried up and I fell asleep.

* * *

When Ob and me met you, honey, you was such a shy thing. Them big ol’ eyes of yours looking like a puppy begging for love.

I knew right off I wanted you. I took Ob out to the back porch after supper and I said, “Ob, we’ve got to take that child home with us.”

Well, Ob had seen how at the supper table you’d been too scared to death to ask for anything. Run out of milk in your glass and too scared to ask Connie Francine to fill it up again. Ob knew an unhappy child when he saw one.

So he said, “We’re taking her today, May,” and we just packed you up and took you. Those folks never cared. Those Ohio kin — they’re good people mostly, but they’re limited, honey.

I couldn’t hardly keep my hands off you those first few days. Remember how I was always touching your hair, combing it all the time and clipping pretty bows to it? I had me a little girl finally, something I’d wanted all my life. I’d come to figure the good Lord wasn’t ever going to give me one, for reasons of His own. But He was holding me steady all those years, waiting for you to be born, waiting for your poor mama to die, waiting for Ob to see you didn’t know how to ask for a glass of milk.

I worried about us not having the money to give you all you truly deserved. I wanted so much to buy you them big plastic houses with those little round-headed people sitting inside. And those great big baby dolls that wet their diapers. I wanted to dress you up in pink and yellow every day. Take you over to Charleston to that big glass mall and go in that big department store and buy everything pink and yellow for little girls.

But we just didn’t have much, honey. We were both sorry for it. Ob made you those little wooden people to play with. And I picked through everything at the Goodwill to find you some nice clothes. But we knew you should’ve had more. We were so sorry for it.

Remember you and me out late that one night? What is it we were doing…. You thought you heard a cat a-meowing and wanted me to come see with you. Do you remember? And we put on our coats and went out, and the moon was as big around as I’d ever seen it, and we didn’t need no lights, it was that bright. And just as we were heading for the shed to see if there was a lost kitty in there somewhere, out of that dark came a big owl just swooping right across our path. Biggest thing I’d ever seen, and not a sound. And you and me, we couldn’t say a word. Just stood there with our hands over our mouths, frozen up like statues, watching those wings flap off into the dark.

I’d not ever seen an owl in all my days, and when I hadn’t had you but a few weeks there that one passed through my life. I knew you’d always be doing that for me and for Ob. Bringing us good things like that.

I used to wonder why God gave you to us so late in life. Why we had to be old already before we could have you. I was almost big as a house and full of diabetes. And Ob an old arthritic skeleton of a man. We couldn’t do none of the things we could’ve done for you thirty or forty years back.

But I thought on it and thought on it till I finally figured it out.

And my guess is that the Lord wanted us all to be just full of need. If Ob and me had been young and strong, why, maybe you wouldn’t’ve felt so necessary to us. Maybe you’d’ve thought we could do just fine without you.

So the Lord let us get old so we’d have plenty cause to need you and you’d feel free to need us right back. We wanted a family so bad, all of us. And we just grabbed on to each another and made us one. Simple as that.

I always told Ob he was my moon and sun. And when you came to us, Summer, honey, you were my shining star.

You are the best little girl I ever did know.