A Green Light
My parents were searching for the intersection in Taipei where, half a century earlier, my father had asked my mother out. “I told her that if she refused, I’d return to this exact spot once a year from the U.S. to wait for her until I died.” Mom scoffed. “Who would believe that nonsense?” Back then, my parents say, there were only a handful of intersections with traffic lights in Taipei. Now, there are approximately 2,639. My parents FaceTimed me, elated, when they finally found their fateful crosswalk. They stood grinning like children while the city swirled around them. — Kelly Kuo
Heaven Can Wait
Eight months pregnant, I was squirming on a chair beside my 26-year-old brother’s hospital bed. I became my only sibling’s caregiver when he begged me to keep his cancer secret. Mitch grinned. “When’s that baby due, sis?” “Five weeks!” “Five?” He released a weary sigh. “Ran, have you seen the movie ‘Heaven Can Wait’?” My heart raced. Was Mitch telling me he could return after his death? For 47 years now, I have looked for and longed for my brother. Sometimes I see him in the glint in the eye of my son, the nephew he didn’t live to meet. — Randye Sundel
Right Place, Finally Right Time
Three years before we met, we worked a block away from each other in the Flatiron district, while living less than a mile apart in Queens. Two years later, she took a new job. Almost simultaneously, I interviewed with a firm that was, once again, one block away from her new employer. I didn’t get that position, but a week later, the interviewer called me to say he’d recommended me to a friend at another company. The company where the woman who’s been the best part of my life for the past 23 years was employed. Fate, apparently, remains undefeated. — Michael Laing
Unexpected Peace
On the first day of school, my date took me to Rockaway Beach. The custody arrangement of my ongoing divorce dictated that I was not on duty. I had always been home for my children on the first day of school. We sat in his beach chairs, fingers interlaced, butts hovering above the warm sand. “Let’s take a quick nap,” he said, “then we’ll swim.” The rhythm of the waves carried my grief from my body out to sea. By the time we woke, the school bus had come and gone. And I was exactly where I needed to be. — Jen Butler
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