Spring returned as spring will, and its breeze carried the sweet and tanged odor of manure turned into fresh thawed earth.
The song of peepers chorused in the swamps.
Rivers rushed, choked with mud, to finally run clear.
Those solemn bears that had slumbered away the winter, lumbered again from their dark caverns to scratch and to blink back the brightness of the world.
With life insurance funds he’d never before dared touch, Jonah had bought back his home for a song.
Now, with the help of his neighbors, he sawed up the dead tree that had fallen in the yard and planted a new tree. He cut back the weeds, and raked up the sticks, and strew new grass seed. Shutters and gutters were rehung, and the porch rail and steps repaired. He oiled the porch swing’s rusted chain.
Inside the house, he opened the shades and windows and let spring’s cool air and warm light pour into the house. He swept and scrubbed the floors, washed the windows and walls until his bones rang with the ache of work.
On good days, he ambled into town to buy groceries, stopped in the Grain & Feed to sit and have a coffee and biscotti and watch the people pass on the street outside the new bay window. He’d return home and sit on the porch swing, rock idly, and watch kids jump from the One Dollar Bridge into the river as they had always done and probably always would do, their screams splitting the shimmering air.
Sometimes he dozed and awakened much later, frightened and confounded to find the sun at a strange new angle in the sky.
He thought of his daughter and wife, and when he heard the song of their laughter in the house, he let it run over him like river water over stone, giving himself up to it and letting it move him wherever it liked.
And he missed them. More than ever. He missed them.
One summer morning, as he sat out in his swing, he spotted Lucinda strolling down along the sidewalk. With the girl. A gasp escaped him and he felt his heart tighten with nervousness and fear. He’d never gone to visit the girl. Never dared.
Lucinda and the girl walked hand in hand.
He watched them as his panicked heart pounded.
Lucinda waved.
Jonah waved.
Lucinda and the girl walked across the yard toward him, the girl with a small canvas bag slung over her arm. He smiled as they came up the steps. He wanted to stand and wrap the girl in his arms, pull her tight to him and feel her warmth, but he stayed put.
He looked in her face for some recognition of him, worried she might be afraid or confused. He saw none.
The girl had grown. Her hair had lightened to the color of honey and now fell past her shoulders. Her face was pink with health and her fingernails trim and clean.
She wore a yellow dress.
Lucinda sat on a porch rail as the girl sat in the swing beside Jonah, her bag on her lap.
Jonah took a deep breath and exhaled it in a long thin thread. “I like your dress,” he said.
“She picked it out herself,” Lucinda said.
He thought of the impossibility of his finding her that day.
If he’d not found her, she’d have died. And he’d have died alone.
If he’d not kept her, he’d never have come back here that night with her, to look around his old home for ancient drawings, and Lucinda would never have come here to investigate it and found more drawings—made connections—without the girl.
What should one call such events?
Coincidence.
The stars aligning.
Fate.
Jonah smiled down at the girl and she smiled back.
“Well,” Jonah said, his face warm. “It’s nice to meet you. What might your name be?”
The girl offered a shy, coy look.
“You know,” she said, her voice soft as dandelion tuft.
“Do I?”
The girl nodded.
“Let’s see if I do,” Jonah said.
He leaned in and whispered in her ear.
She looked up at him.
“Did he guess it?” Lucinda said.
The girl smiled, and her eyes shone deep and dark and bright and lovely.
And Jonah thought of the world’s many misfortunes, and of its many miracles.
What came next, God knew.