The Lateral

Chapter 7

I t was going to be fine. It was all going to be fine and on top of the current situation working out, this morning I had also entered my name several times into a new sweepstakes. If that came through, I’d have my very own johnboat, and what could have been better than that?

Well, one thing would have been better: Christal showing up to meet us, actually coming here like she’d said that she would. When Meadow had heard about the scheduled reunion today, she’d taken another shower and dried her hair, and then she’d asked for my help curling it. She’d carefully picked her outfit and cleaned off her gym shoes with a rag. “You look beautiful,” I assured her.

But she also looked nervous. “I know my mom remembers that it’s my birthday next weekend,” she’d remarked. “I’m going to invite her over.” Then she’d stared in my direction, daring me to deny that she could do it.

Feeling weak and close to throwing up with nerves at that point, I’d only shrugged, figuring that I’d deal with the issue later—if it ever arose. Despite what Christal had promised, I had serious doubts about whether we’d see her at all…and as much as I wished she’d come for Meadow’s sake, I was also very, very worried about the other side of that coin. If she showed up, would she act ok? Probably not. Would she hurt her daughter again? I’d swallowed and my stomach flipped. This reunion was a terrible idea.

But despite my fears, here we were, waiting for Christal in the nearly empty coffee shop as the afternoon crept by. I’d chosen this place because I thought it was just about to go out of business; in all the times I’d done recon missions at different locations to prep for a potential meeting, I had never seen more than a single customer buying a drink here. That meant it was perfect for two reasons. One, there would be fewer people to make me feel ashamed of myself and my family in case trouble erupted (and if Christal ever showed, I was pretty sure that trouble would erupt). But reason number two was that it hadn’t shut down quite yet. The guy behind the counter had to stay with his register even though he wasn’t serving anyone, so if things got physical and I wasn’t able to get to my phone to call for help, he could do it for me.

As it turned out, I didn’t need the barista for backup because there was another person in the café today, a very, very large man wearing a black t-shirt and no coat (although it was snowing), and sunglasses (although it was cloudy and he was inside). He also wore a baseball hat that covered his dark hair except for the ponytail that hung between his shoulder blades and down his back, his very muscular, very gigantic back.

Yeah, Jake was here. Over our delicious and filling lunch at the restaurant, I’d also filed him in on the story of how I’d bribed Meadow to go to school after her suspension by promising a visit with her mother.

“It was wrong of me to offer that,” I’d confessed as I savored every bite of my Caesar salad. I’d ordered extra croutons and they were so, so good, a delectable crunch. I’d swallowed a mouthful of lettuce and shaved cheese before I’d continued. “She isn’t supposed to see Christal until the court approves it. I could get myself in trouble by arranging a meeting, but there’s an even bigger problem.”

He’d waited.

“Christal is the problem,” I stated. As always, Christal was the problem. “I’ve texted, I’ve called her, I’ve gone to the places where Meadow said she used to hang out. I found some of her old boyfriends and asked them to have her contact me, I checked the online inmate lookup in the county jail, I went to two shelters, I called the hospital and got as much information as they would provide.” But I’d shaken my head. “I can’t find her.” Despite Meadow’s disappointment as I told her, “No, I haven’t heard back yet,” it had also been a relief when I’d looked at my phone and there was nothing new. Maybe we wouldn’t have to see her, I’d thought. Maybe this would be ok.

But then, suddenly, I had heard. Just this morning, Christal had suddenly texted something that kind of made sense: “Ok. What?”

I’d stared, a little disbelieving, and then had sent her a time and a place. I emphasized how much her daughter wanted to see her. “Please come,” I’d written, begging. “Meadow misses you so much.” I could have continued with some lies to butter her up, like I could have said that I knew she’d show because she was such a good mother and that she loved her daughter, but I didn’t. I figured I’d be in enough trouble if this meeting came to light with the CPS people and I didn’t need to give Christal any ammunition to use against me in a custody fight. Also, I just couldn’t make myself type those giant whoppers.

After hearing me talk at the restaurant, Jake had wanted to be involved. “I’m not doing much else,” he’d pointed out, because he hadn’t used this time to go away to a historical place, a lovely beach, or any of the other things he might have done with his cheat week before he got back to training. I’d half-heartedly tried to tell him no, but I wasn’t someone to turn down a favor—and this was a big one. Anyway, he had eaten his lunch, listening to my story, and then he’d concluded, “I’m coming.”

After I’d texted to say that Christal had agreed to meet, he had further taken it upon himself to pick us up in the truck and drive us here, and then had sat at his own table to observe. He was wearing the hat and sunglasses to go incognito, but really, there was no way to disguise his huge, hard body, or the cut of his seriously chiseled jaw, or his hands that looked like they could have palmed a beach ball. I looked at him across the room and felt comforted, especially when he turned his head briefly away from the door to nod at me. I nodded back.

A woman came in, saw him sitting there, and did a cartoon-extreme double take. Then she got a coffee, staring the whole time in his direction as he split his attention between the door and the sidewalk outside. I watched her approach his table and start to talk, probably asking for an autograph…now I saw her slide her fingertips down her chest, between her boobs. That move would have turned out a lot sexier if she hadn’t been wearing a big, puffy jacket, and it certainly didn’t work on him. Jake shook his head and he seemed to be red as he stared at the floor. Was he hot? I was freezing in this place. The woman left and he kept his gaze on the peeling fake wood.

“Isn’t my mom coming?” Meadow asked anxiously.

I smiled at her, keeping everything calm. “You know how she runs late,” I soothed. But we also knew that even for Christal, this was very late, and I was doubting that she would—

The door to the coffee shop flung open and cold air poured in. A woman stood there scratching her armpit: Christal had arrived.

“Hey,” she announced, and seemed startled as Meadow jumped up, ran to her, and then hugged her tightly. Meadow was taller, because none of the women in my family were overly big and Christal was especially tiny. Even I (who wanted to be five-six, but didn’t quite make it) was larger. But her lack of height was deceptive; in a fight, she was an animal, which I knew from personal experience. Today she wore a big, dirty coat that flapped around her but I could still tell that she’d lost weight, and Meadow’s hug almost knocked her off her feet. Her cheeks were hollow, too. Her hair was tangled and greasy and she had dark circles around her eyes, which had a vacant look to them…

Corn nuts. She was still using and she’d shown up high! How could she? Would Meadow be able to tell? I watched anxiously as they walked the few steps back to our table, but she was only smiling. She was so happy to see her mom, even with all the absolute crap that the woman had put her through. They hadn’t had enough food and the utilities hadn’t always worked. Their house was a constant mess and mostly dirty. Christal had boyfriend after boyfriend, so many strange men coming through. She’d disappeared and left Meadow without a word about when she’d return. The last time she’d done it had been the impetus for the authorities to remove her daughter from her care—it was due to Christal’s absence and also due to the drugs that were in plain view when a concerned neighbor had knocked on the door of their cottage. He had called the police.

“And I got a C on my last vocab test and Ember thinks I can do better,” Meadow was telling her as they sat down. She turned to look at me, challenging, and of course Christal did the expected, taking the position that opposed mine and also insulting me.

“What’s wrong with a C?” she asked. “You never did better than that in school, Ember. You used to talk with big words to act smart, but you weren’t.”

Meadow smiled triumphantly.

“I remember your mom saying that you were her last chance for a good kid, but she got another dumb slut,” Christal continued. “Ember Easy.” She laughed, but Meadow lost the smile.

“Mom…”

“Hi,” I said flatly. “I remember my grades, Christal, and I remember yours. She’s better than both of us and she could do very well, if she wanted to.”

“Who gives a fuck?” her mother mumbled, and now Meadow nodded, back in agreement.

“I’m going to get you a coffee,” I stated. She needed something strong. Unfortunately, the counter was a little too far for me to hear what Meadow leaned forward to whisper, but from the way she kept sneaking glances at me, I had a pretty good idea of what she was saying. Her mom’s eyes had started to close and I doubted that she understood the secret message. But I did.

“Drink this,” I told Christal, and plunked an extra-large paper cup in front of her.

She blinked a few times. “No muffin?”

“You missed seeing my costume for Halloween. I was an old-time punk from the nineteen eighties,” Meadow told her. She was talking fast, probably because there was a lot of ground to cover since they hadn’t had any communication for several months. “She thought I should have a costume,” she continued, looking at me dismissively.

“How old are you?” Christal asked, and Meadow nodded.

“I know, Mom! I’m too old for kid shit, right?”

I thought it had been an actual question, though. “She’s turning thirteen next weekend,” I said, and Meadow became incensed.

“She knows that!” she told me furiously. “Do you think she doesn’t know?”

Christal’s eyes were closed again.

Meadow talked faster. “We didn’t get any trick-or-treaters because we don’t have any neighbors, but she was so dumb and she bought all kinds of candy.”

That had been for her, because I’d realized that she didn’t have friends to roam with or a Halloween party to attend.

“And she carved three pumpkins, taking all this time,” Meadow went on. She glared at me. “Except someone , and we know exactly who, came up on our porch on October thirtieth and smashed them. Ember was all upset and she had to clean up the mess.”

Someone had probably been the mean girls from her school. They’d thrown one pumpkin against my car and dented the door slightly. We lived far enough from other kids that they must have gotten a ride to our house, so some quasi-adult had helped them.

“Isn’t Ember dumb, Mom? Mom?”

Christal blinked very, very slowly. “What?”

Meadow launched into a story about Thanksgiving and how I’d cooked a huge turkey that had filled the little oven we had, so that there was no room to make anything else. Then she talked about another stupid thing I’d done on Christmas, how I’d tried to make her a stocking.

“Like I need a stocking! We never did little kid stuff like that, right, Mom? Mom?”

I poked Christal hard in the arm and she jerked awake. “But you guys had a tree and the star on top,” I reminded Meadow. “You said that you had holiday traditions together and I wanted you to have more of them. There’s nothing wrong with that.” Personally, I would have loved to hang a stocking that someone would fill. I’d never done it before. “Do you have that star, Christal?” I asked. “Did you take it with you?”

“What in the hell are you talking about? What star?” she asked. Her words slurred together.

“The star topper, for the Christmas tree. Meadow missed…” I stopped talking. Meadow had turned red and suddenly I knew that there hadn’t been a star, that I had been on a wild goose chase when I’d tried to find a replica for her. “Never mind,” I stated.

The rest of the reunion didn’t go any better. Meadow wanted me to leave them alone, to leave the coffee shop and wait outside, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Christal zoned out enough that she almost fell from her chair and the guy behind the counter noticed and asked if she was OD’ing. He wanted to call the police and EMS.

“She’s ok. We’re leaving,” I told him quickly. I grabbed Christal’s arm, tugging on her and trying to force her to stand. She did, slowly, but leaned heavily against me and I braced myself to stay on my feet. “I’ll drive you wherever you want to go,” I said to her, “but we’re done here.”

“What? We’re not leaving yet,” Meadow said. I heard panic in her voice. “Mom? Mom!”

Suddenly, a large figure loomed on Christal’s other side. Jake took that arm and transferred her weight to himself. He had removed his sunglasses, so I could read his expression better and what I saw there was worry. He probably felt a desire to step in and solve this, but he didn’t know our history. I hadn’t told him everything about her and how little she cared for other people, even those she was supposed to love.

He started to speak. “We can go to my—”

I thought I knew what he was going to suggest: “We can go to my house.” And no, we could not, so I cut him off. “We’ll take Christal wherever she needs to go, ok?” I said loudly. “Ok, Chris? Where do you want to go?”

“The hospital?” Jake suggested, his voice very low.

But Christal seemed to understand that, and jerked herself awake. “No, I don’t need more fucking treatment! I’m staying at my boyfriend Haynes’ place.”

Meadow wasn’t arguing anymore as we returned to the truck. She quietly got into the back and helped with her mom’s seat belt, saying that yeah, Christal had to wear it. I saw her keep holding her mother’s hand when that was securely clicked.

“Where are we going?” Jake wanted to know, and when there was silence, he turned around to look at my niece. “Wake up,” he ordered, not much louder but in a way that meant business. Christal opened her eyes again and mumbled an address, and after a few tries, we thought we understood her. We drove in silence to a house that was about an inch away from falling down and with trash, appliances, and old car parts filling the front yard. I saw Meadow take it all in, but she didn’t speak again until Jake opened the rear door and told Christal that we were here, it was time to go.

Then she said, “Mom.” There was so much urgency in her voice. “Mom, remember what we talked about.”

“Meadow, you’re not going anywhere with her,” I said. “Christal, if you try to interfere with the custody arrangement, I’ll call the police and they’ll arrest you.”

She didn’t answer but her daughter yelled, “Fuck you, Ember!”

Jake stared at Meadow and she looked at the floor. Then he turned to me. “Stay here and I’ll take her.”

Christal didn’t appear to absorb any of that. Jake had to lift her out of the car and then he held her upright as she shuffled to the front door of the wrecked house. He pounded on that even louder than he had on my door the first time we’d met him, and a guy in about the same condition as Christal eventually opened it.

Jake shoved my niece at him, saying something we couldn’t hear from inside the truck. The man looked vaguely surprised but did accept the burden of Christal, and closed the door behind them. Jake wiped his hands together and frowned as he walked back toward us, and it was over.

Except for Meadow, it wasn’t. “I hate you,” she told me, and I nodded.

“I’m so sorry about this,” I said. He got in and started the big engine, but I didn’t pay attention to where we were driving because I was swiveled around to look into the back seat.

“It’s all your fault,” Meadow said. “I hate you!” Jake appeared ready to say something but I put my hand on his arm to silence him.

“My mom is coming to get me on my birthday,” she told us. “She’s coming, she told me! She already has a present, a silver necklace that says my name. She promised and I don’t care if you don’t believe me!”

“Meadow, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let this meeting happen. No, I made it happen,” I admitted. “I should have listened to the social worker and kept you two apart. I thought it might help you, but I was wrong.”

“You’re wrong all the time! It’s all your fault!” she said again, but the anger had gone and she was sobbing out the words. “You did this and I hate you. I hate you, Ember!”

“It’s ok,” I said but I was also crying, so I turned around and stopped trying to talk out the problem. I looked at the dashboard and used the collar of my coat to wipe away tears as I decided how I would kill Christal. She couldn’t have remembered that Meadow’s birthday was coming up? She couldn’t have held off using for one more hour so she’d have been sober when she saw her daughter?

No, she couldn’t. That was why all the expert people looking out for children’s welfare had stepped in, and that was why they’d told me not to let Christal come around. I really couldn’t have done things much worse, I decided. I had allowed Meadow to be hurt, endangered my custody of her, made her hate me more, and facilitated a planning session for them to scheme about running off together. At least, I was almost certain that had been what Meadow was up to. Given how out of her mind Christal had been, though, I didn’t think it would happen. And maybe Meadow now saw…no, she wouldn’t let herself see the truth about her mother. She wanted to believe that Christal was someone different and better, and I didn’t blame her for that. Who wouldn’t want her mom to love her? I listened to her cry and I was so sorry.

After a while, though, I sat up straight and looked around. We had previously turned onto a road I hadn’t recognized, but there was a lot I still didn’t recognize about this area and I had assumed that we were taking a different way home. But now we were turning into smaller, gravel road—was this a driveway? It was only one lane, but it stretched off farther than I could see, disappearing into woods. We made a turn and Jake reached up and touched a button on the ceiling of the car, and a gate opened in front of us.

“This is the way to my house,” he said to us.

“We should probably go back to our own place,” I said, wiping my face with my collar again.

“I need to feed my animals,” he told me. “I thought Meadow could help.”

She didn’t answer, but I could feel her listening.

“I have two cows, a cat, a dog, a herd of sheep, another herd of goats, a pig, and a little horse. A miniature one, not a pony,” he clarified. “You can’t ride him. I also have other horses, a Belgian and a Shire. They can carry me.”

“Why do you have all those animals?” Meadow asked.

“I bought the two big horses because I like to ride,” he said. “I always wanted a dog, so I adopted one, but she was lonely since I was away a lot. I went to adopt another dog and there was a bunch of goats that someone couldn’t take care of. I have a lot of land.”

He did; we had been driving for a while and although the trees were broken by glimpses of fields, I hadn’t seen a building yet.

“Then they called me and said they were having a problem feeding some sheep that had been surrendered. I adopted the sheep, and also the cows because they hadn’t been treated right.Somebody had bought that mini horse but it was harder to take care of him than they expected, and that was how he ended up in my barn. The pig was the same. He used to be small and cute, but when he got big and hungry, they didn’t want him anymore. The cat is a stray that wandered in and I started taking care of her because she made friends with the dog, and they hang together constantly. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I sound like a fucking hoarder.”

“It sounds like you did a very nice thing,” I corrected. “Very nice.”

Meadow didn’t say anything else but when I turned my head enough to observe what she was doing, I saw that she had also sat up straight and had wiped off her face on her sleeve.

The driveway veered to the left. “Here it is,” Jake said. “That’s my house. The barn is in the back, and the goat and sheep shed is over there.” He pointed. “The chicken house is…I guess I forgot to tell you about the chickens. Lots of people get chickens, but they’re a bit of a pain in the ass. I adopted them, and that’s it.”He paused.“Well, I also have a goose.”

“Oh,” I said, and then neither Meadow nor I spoke. We both stared through the windshield.

“Let’s go inside,” he said and got out of the truck. But neither Meadow nor I moved, and we kept staring.

“Is this real?” she asked me, and I understood what she meant. It felt like we’d driven into a fake place—like a movie set, something that had jumped out of a book or someone’s imagination. It couldn’t have been real, because it was perfect.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “We should follow him.” We got out but then we just stood there, even though it was so cold, and both of us still stared.

If someone had said to me, “Ember, tell me about the house of your dreams,” I wouldn’t have been able to describe it. I didn’t know the names for the different styles of things, beyond the obvious (log cabin, castle, apartment building). I didn’t know the name of this style, either, but now that I was looking at it, I knew what my dream house was. It was this one, with the round stones at the bottom and the white boards for the rest, and the chimney, and the red front door, and all the windows. This was the perfect house, without any doubt.

“You all right?” Jake called. We walked forward then, through a little gate in a low, stone wall, and on a brick path that led to the broad porch. There was a swing and a few chairs, and the door was extra wide and welcoming. “I parked in the front so you can see things, but the garage is around the back,” he explained. “When this place was built, there were no cars yet, so I added it. I rebuilt the barn, too. It had fallen down.”

Meadow took off her shoes without being asked and we followed him through the wide hallway on the wide planks of the wood floor. We both peered into the rooms we passed: one had couches, tall chairs, and a big stone fireplace; another had a desk in the center and shelves filled with books. There was a dining room with a table that might have seated twenty people and a little bathroom tucked under the stairs.

He stopped in the kitchen. “This area was small. I had to expand a little,” he told us, but it didn’t look any different from the rest of the house. How had he made it seem the same, like it had been here already? I looked at the large island, the wood table, the sink where you could wash several pots at the same time. Tall windows looked into the back where I could see the barn, more snow-covered fields, and dark woods.

“Want something to eat?” He walked into another little room and came back with an armload of food, and then he opened what I’d thought was a cabinet to reveal a refrigerator as large as the bathroom in the place I rented. He took out more.

“No, I’m not very hungry,” Meadow said. She had regained her power of speech. “Are the animals in that barn?” She had walked to look into the back. “Is this really all yours?”

“Yeah, it is,” he answered. “Let’s go see them. I have spare boots…no, you can’t wear my boots,” he said, studying our feet. No, we couldn’t have worn his boots, but we probably could have slept in them or used them to go boating. “Your shoes are too clean for a barn.”

“I don’t care about my shoes,” she mumbled, and I remembered her carefully wiping them before we’d gone to meet Christal.

“Let’s go see the animals!” I said much too cheerfully, which earned a look of confusion from Jake and a glare from Meadow.

But once we were in the barn, she pretty much melted. “The tiny horse,” she whispered when she saw him, and I thought she might cry again.

“He’s a good boy,” Jake approved. “Watch.” He stood in front of the stall and said, “Chip, would you like a carrot?”

And the little horse snorted through his nose and stomped his little paw like he was answering! “Awwwww,” Meadow and I both breathed, and we watched Chip chow down on his treat.

“Did you name him?” I asked.

“No, he came that way. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the big boys.”

Good gracious, the big horses compared to the mini one like Jake’s truck compared to my car. They were beautiful, but also intimidating. Neither Meadow or I had ever ridden, and she had lots of questions about that, about their care, about what they ate besides carrots. Maybe she was forgetting what had happened earlier…but then I saw her check her phone, bite her lip, and sigh. She must have passed along her new number to her mother during their secret conversation at the coffee shop, but obviously Christal hadn’t bothered to remember it. Christal hadn’t texted me either, but in my case? I was glad. I planned to never, ever speak to her again.

Meadow went back to the tiny horse and I turned to Jake. “Thank you,” I told him. “Thank you for bringing us here and thank you for your help with Christal.”

“I could have brought that woman here too, to keep talking about things. That barista wasn’t going to stay quiet much longer.”

“I was surprised that he hadn’t already called over a bunch of friends to stare at you. I think he saw through your disguise.”

“I gave him a hundred to keep his mouth shut,” he said casually.

“A hundred dollars?” I stared. “Really?”

“Price of privacy,” he said, so nonchalant. “What was Christal on?”

I looked over at Meadow. “Drugs,” I answered, and he snorted much like his baby horse had done. “The particular kind doesn’t matter,” I continued. “What matters is that she had to swallow it, stick it up her nose, or put it in her vein today, of all days! That was how she went to see her daughter. She got high because that’s the most important thing to her.” I stopped, so worked up that I coughed, and then I lowered my voice. “She couldn’t have come here, not in that state. And she doesn’t look like much but she’s actually very conniving. She would have stolen from you or she would have figured out a way to get her friends to come back here and do it with her. They take everything they can see and then they wreck everything else, just for fun.”

“She’s done that before?” he asked, and I nodded.

“Many times, to many different people. She doesn’t care how little there is to steal.” I shuddered, literally, to think of what she would have done to his beautiful, perfect house with all the nice furniture and the pretty pictures on the walls.

“Are you going to talk to Meadow about what she said to you?”

“You mean that she hated me, that it was my fault?”

He nodded and his eyes narrowed as he watched her. She had her arms around the mini horse’s neck and was talking to him quietly. “You shouldn’t let her say shit like that.”

“No, it’s a good thing,” I answered quickly.

“What?” He turned a sharp look on me. “The hell it is.”

“The children’s services people told me about how she would blame me for what happened. It’s easier for her to do that than to be angry at her mom, who’s not around.”

“And who deserves it,” Jake added.

“But it’s a good thing that Meadow gets mad at me,” I told him. “It means that she feels safe enough to have that emotion, that she knows I won’t get mad back at her and throw her out. It means we have a bond.”

His expression was extremely doubtful. “Her telling you to fuck off means there’s a bond?”

“Yeah,” I insisted. “It’s a step forward. It’s really a win!”

“Then why is it making you cry again to talk about it?”

I wiped off my face and went to look at the big horses, turning away from him. “This has been a hard day, that’s all. Hard days happen to everyone, it’s just ordinary. But look how it’s going now, with us here in this perfect place.”

“Today was nothing like ordinary.”

“Lots of people have problems in their families. We’re not special or different.” I took a breath and tentatively reached for the horse. Jake had said it was ok to pet them, and this big guy appeared to like it. It was soothing to feel his soft fur—or pelt? I wasn’t sure what to call it. “I bet you didn’t expect to spend your vacation like this,” I mentioned. “You really didn’t have to come with us, but I’m glad you did.” I felt so grateful that he cared about Meadow enough to show up for her. How lucky was she to have this guy on her side?

“I wasn’t doing anything else,” he mentioned. “I didn’t plan to travel.” He picked up a pokey tool and started to move straw stuff into the horses’ feeding areas, but he paused and leaned on it. “Meadow, you want to give Chip his dinner?”

“Yeah,” she said eagerly, and I also helped to feed everyone. Then we were hungry too, so I offered to make dinner for us in his kitchen. That was a new experience for me. There was plenty of everything, not only food to use but also pots and utensils, and he and Meadow sat at the round table and talked about the animals as I cooked.

“What?” he asked suddenly when he met my eyes, and she nodded knowingly.

“Ember stares like that,” she explained to him. “It’s really creepy.”

“I was just…” I smiled and shook my head. “Nothing,” I told them.

It wasn’t “nothing,” though. It was a feeling that I’d suddenly been struck with, an overwhelming sense of something that I might have called…normalcy? Yeah, this felt normal. This was what other people did: they sat and talked at their kitchen table, they ate together, they argued when told to help with the dishes (that was Meadow, but she didn’t do it very seriously). It was a feeling that I hadn’t experienced too often in my life, and I knew exactly what I had to do.

I had to hold onto it for as long as I could, and I had to remember it. You just never knew if you would feel something like that again, and it was so wonderful that I never wanted to forget.