Tell No One

by Harlan Coben

Here is the truth about tragedy: It’s good for the soul. The fact is, I’m a better person because of the deaths. If every cloud has a silver lining, this one is admittedly pretty flimsy. But there it is. That doesn’t mean it’s worth it or an even trade or anything like that, but I know I’m a better man than I used to be. I have a finer sense of what’s important. I have a keener understanding of people’s pain.

“We waited together for the school bus. I held his hand. Brandon was five years old. He looked up at me in that way children do at that age. He wore brown pants that already had a grass stain on the knee. I remember the yellow bus pulling up and the sound the door made when it opened. Then Brandon let go of my hand and started climbing up the steps. I wanted to reach out and snatch him back and take him home, but I stood there, frozen. He moved inside the bus and I heard that noise again and the door slid closed. Brandon sat by a window. I could see his face. He waved to me. I waved back and as the bus pulled away, I said to myself, ‘There goes my whole world.’ That yellow bus with its flimsy metal sides and its driver I didn’t know from Adam chariotted away what was in effect everything to me. And at that moment, I realized what I had felt the day of his birth. Terror. Not just apprehension. Cold, stark terror. You can fear illness or old age or death. But there’s nothing like that small stone of terror that sat in my belly as I watched that bus pull away. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

The media, an entity with the collective attention span of a Twinkie-filled two-year-old, immediately focused on this shiny new toy, kicking the old one under the bed.