“Nice ribbon,” I said.
“It is for a girl,” she said, somewhere between serious and proud. “Her name was Zoe.”
“That’s right,” I said.
She asked if the bikes sounded like friendly thunder. I told her they do when thunder is trying to be kind.
In October, the county board voted to set aside emergency funds for summer electric bills after the chaplain and the nurse testified in a room that smelled like old carpet cleaner and new coffee.
They used numbers and stories. Neither alone would have done it. Together they did. No one clapped. They just moved to the next item on the agenda because that is how the world changes sometimes.
On the first cool ride of fall, we took the long way around the lake. Leaves were starting to burn at the edges.
The sky had room in it again.
When we passed the little cemetery, we turned in without speaking.
We parked in a neat row and stood in a quiet half circle. Someone had tucked the stuffed fox up on top of the stone so the morning dew would not dampen its tail. A child’s drawing was pinned under a pebble.
It showed a bike with a big round headlight and what might have been a ribbon drawn by a hand that will only get surer as years go by.
I rested my palm on the cool top of the stone where her name was carved clean and kind. “We carried you,” I said under my breath, not because she needed reminding but because I did. “We carry you still.”
On the ride out, the wind tugged at the pink ribbon on my bar. For a second it lifted so high it seemed to point down the road, the way people point when they are leading the way. Friendly thunder followed us, soft and steady.
You could call what we did charity. You could call it neighborliness. You could call it a borrowed miracle we promise to keep paying forward. I don’t know the right word. I only know what we do.
When a person is left alone, we show up.
When the world forgets a name, we say it out loud.
When the heat presses on a roof that never had a chance, we bring air and water and the cold hum of mercy.
And when a child’s pink ribbon flutters on a handlebar at the edge of town, we ride in that direction, together, until the road runs out or the weather turns kind, whichever comes first.
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This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment and inspirational purposes. While it may draw on real-world themes, all characters, names, and events are imagined. Any resemblance to actual people or situations is purely coincidenta
