Foster

by Claire Keegan

‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’

Now that we can go no farther, we must turn back. Maybe the way back will somehow make sense of the coming.

And that is when he puts his arms around me and gathers me into them as though I were his own.

I take off from standing and race on down the lane. My heart does not so much feel that it is in my chest as in my hands, and that I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside of me.