And I took my half of that story back.
The mirror doesn’t scare me anymore.
I look in it and I see a fifty-one-year-old woman with laugh lines and reading glasses and code under her fingernails, and I like her.
It took me a divorce and a forgotten box to meet her again, but I like her.
Last week, a food bank in a town two states over sent Second Winter a photo.
Their whole volunteer team, holding a handmade sign that said THANK YOU FOR THE SOFTWARE — WE FED 4,000 FAMILIES THIS MONTH.
I printed it out.
I taped it to the wall of my little office, right next to the only other thing I keep there.
The old cardboard box.
LAKESIDE — ORIGINAL FILES, in my own handwriting, from a lifetime ago.
I kept the box.
Not because of what it did to Gerald.
Because of what it reminded me.
