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.