I slowly walked over to him in the rain. "Hey," I said.
He glanced over, then went back to staring blankly towards the road.
"They say every time someone commits a selfless act, an angel gets their wings," I murmur, sitting next to him, the yellow umbrella I held the only bright thing in out world at the moment. "You were her angel."
"Why did she have to do that?" he whispered. "She knew...she knew she wouldn't make it through. Didn't she know, I'd still be here, I was waiting for her to get home. We were going to make spaghetti together. I was going to tell her how I made the lacrosse team. We were going to celebrate with ice cream I had gotten on the way home. Didn't she know? Didn't she...didn't she realize, I would still be here, when she was gone?"
"Questions you'll never find the answers to," I said gently. "It's best not to dwell on them, you'll go mad."
"Like you would know," he sobbed. "You never even knew your mother!"
I hugged him tight. "I knew my father before he was deployed," I murmured into his ear. "I know. It's hard. You don't think you can go on. But you will. Because she would have wanted you to."
Ben beat his fists into the road until I was sure his hands would bleed. "It's not fair! She shouldn't have left me! How could she be so..." the words caught in his throat. I knew his next word was going to be selfish. The exact opposite of what his mother was, coming down this road, when a kid darted out, running away from who we later found out was his kidnapper. Ben's mom swerved off the road, knowing it would be too late for her to break, and crashed into the ditch on the side of the road. The engine caught fire; she was unconscious. She never stood a chance. "I can't believe she would do that," he whispered.
"I can. She was an angel. Just like you. And I know, in her position, you would have done the same thing, and your mother would be kneeling here on the pavement."
Ben said nothing. I left the umbrella next to him. His mother's umbrella. "Come back when you're ready," I say quietly. "My aunt is making pizza tonight. We'll be here for you. Always."
As I walked away, I knew that Ben would stay kneeling there, one arm gripping the other as tight as he could, silently sobbing as hard as the rain was coming down. The umbrella would stay next to him, gathering a pool of water, as he continued to stare in the distance where his mother was killed, asking himself one word, over and over, until it lost its meaning and was just an empty mantra, always continuing, never to be answered.
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