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It wasn't to be a
car this time. Glen and Maggie took a bus. Glen had hesitantly picked
up the crutch Maggie had offered him.
Boys still rode their
bicycles, gals still skipped ropes. Their mothers still gossiped. But
something had changed. Glen didn't smile when he saw this daily, common,
unimportant enactment which had always brought dimples to his cheeks.
He looked away from
the bus window. Maggie was playing with a toddler. He had blond hair like
him. Take away three decades and the bandages; the toddler might just
be little Glen. Maggie had once told Glen one morning as he lay in the
bed still longing for her to come back to sleep, just because he wanted
to curl up his arms around her in the lazy autumn weather.
"A few years
down the line, when we get that house by the lake,
Glen! Listen
up, few years from now on, hee hee, stop tickling me. I won't hee talk
hee hee to you!"
"OKAY, Go on
After a few years
"
She had given him
a scolding glance. "Yea. I would like to have a baby, Glen. Our baby.
I can't wait for us to argue upon his name"
And she had been
lost then, her eyes dilated and she had seemed to be floating out the
window, chasing naughty li'l Zack. "Zack. I'll call him Zack. You
too. Nice name. Zack."
Glen had smiled a
smile that was from his heart. He had kissed her cheek.
The toddler mumbled something in his native tongue, one that can be deciphered
only by mothers and their children.
Maggie giggled and
touched the Toddler's nose. "What does Zack want, huh?"
Glen glanced. A snake
had sniffed Maggie as they say. The Toddler was pulling on Maggie's skirt.
Mugh-glubhg-mhoohb he called her. Spitting on his bib.
"His name is
Jon," the Toddler's mother clarified.
Maggie nodded and
smiled.
Glen looked up at
the road. It was still 5 minutes to the Mall.
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