Chapter 24
A Welcome Rest
Grief is one of the strangest things.
Grief weighs something. It’s heavy. A weight that pulls down inside a person like wet clothing. It tugs downward with a stubborn grip, like sticky-thick mud sucking doggedly at each footstep. Like the ocean deep dragging down on a swimmer’s tired legs. It feels lonely, empty, and suffocating. It drains and fills a person’s mind all at the same time. Grief is, indeed, a strange thing, and it can cover the living like an unstoppable floodwater.
Much, much later, Nicolas would remember little about that afternoon in the Black Forest. He had trouble recalling the raindrops striking his bare head or rolling down his temples. He couldn’t recall how the pony’s damp lead rope rubbed his skin raw. He didn’t remember the gentleness
