How to Save a Life Read Free Page B

years is that big of a gap.”
    He quietly flips his pages.

Jill

     
    The train is a little behind schedule. “A little” is the way the station agent describes it at first, but when I press for details, he admits there’s trouble at one of the switches and it could be another hour. We sit on a bench while we wait; Mom pulls her bag into her lap and digs through it until she’s recovered a well-worn envelope—pictures of Mandy that she stares at every day. “Look at her, Jill,” she says, holding the snapshots out to me.
    “I’ve looked at her, Mom.”
    Giving the photos an insistent little shake, she says, “Why are you here today if you aren’t going to participate? I’d rather do this alone than have you here being so… I don’t know, Jill. So sulky, so hard.”
    “So me , you mean?”
    “This is not you, Jill.” She retracts the pictures, but I lean over and grab them from her hand before she can put them away.
    They’re the same pictures I’ve seen a couple of times—snapshots Mom printed from e-mails. Mandy and her big belly at the park. Mandy and her big belly on some bridge. On a couch. Standing in a bare hallway. In all of the pictures, she’s wearing the same outfit, and her big belly is the exact same bigness, as though they all were taken on the same day. And in all of the pictures, Mandy and her big belly are alone. I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of this girl, what I’m supposed to feel.
    “She has good hair,” I say, an offering, the best I can do. Her hair is palest blonde, thick and glossy and halfway to her waist.
    “Prenatal vitamins will do that.”
    When I hand the pictures back to Mom, she shuffles through them yet again, staring hard, as if she’s seeing the face of a long-lost relative or searching for the answer to some private, momentous question that, for whatever reason, can’t be answered by me.
    She looks at her watch. “Let’s walk over to Common Grounds for some blueberry coffee cake. It might be my last for a while,” she says, standing. “I don’t want the baby to develop a sugar habit so early, the way you did.”
    “I turned out okay.”
    “Mmm.” It’s a noncommittal sound, like maybe I did and maybe I didn’t.

     
    When we get back to the station, Mom convinces the security guy to let us wait on the platform. Maybe she told him our whole sob story; maybe she dropped her buddy the mayor’s name—I don’t know. But when I come out of the bathroom, she hustles me through the waiting area and toward the TO TRAINS sign. Security Guy searches Mom’s purse and pats down my pockets before we can climb the ramp. We emerge outside to see the train crawling toward the station at what seems like two miles an hour.
    We wait forever for it to go a hundred yards, Mom perched at the very edge of the yellow strip you’re not supposed to cross if you don’t want to fall onto the tracks and wind up with a severed limb. She’s maximally nervous. I know this because she hasn’t said one word in the last fifteen minutes, since we walked back from the coffee shop. The sun is fully out now, sky blue, LoDo looking its best and ready to make a good impression on Mandy.
    I will try to do the same.
    I move a little closer to Mom and hope she knows I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care.
    Finally the train rolls to a stop; within moments people emerge from the silver cars. A lot of them light up cigarettes immediately and cluster in groups without their luggage—you can tell these are the ones who have the good fortune to not have Denver as their final destination. Not that I don’t like it here. It’s a good city. But when I’m free to leave, I’m going to.
    The passengers with luggage are slower to come out.
    Mom glances back at me. “Be nice to her, Jill. Welcoming. Put yourself in her shoes. Imagine what she’s going through. Set aside your opinions about this and try to think—”
    “Mom. Calm down. I’m not a monster.”
    Of course you’re