EMMA
After breakfast, I say goodbye to Phoebe at the subway and cut across Central Park. There’s a city’s worth of people walking their dogs or lying on picnic blankets or running after their kids. It’s a perfect day for a nice walk through the trees.
I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t realize it until I’m passing right beneath it, but I know this tree. Sienna and I used to bring Josh here right after he was born. We’d lie around, just like all these people are doing today, and we’d talk and laugh and spend afternoons blissfully ignorant of the future that was hurtling down the barrel towards us.
I stop and look up. The tree looks a little barer now. Thinner in the trunk, graying in the leaves. I have that familiar pang in my chest. The deep aching stab that comes with the reminder
