The One-in-a-Million Boy

by Monica Wood

Can memory be revisited to allow us to see now what we didn’t see then?

Ona thought him a gentleman and made him want to be one.

Her generosity—her willingness to find goodness here—struck him like a wall of water.

She died that evening and left me, in Louise fashion, sitting in ten kinds of dark.

When he’d first told her this he’d been reaching—overreaching—and yet over time he’d managed to grab hold of what he’d placed beyond his grasp.