Frances’s room had a window that looked out on the garden. Diane and I hung her pictures on the wall. Her wedding photo with Joe from 1963. Mark and Diane and their little brother, Paul, at the beach in 1979. Her grandchildren. Her great-grandchildren.
Mark brought her a little Kansas souvenir from a gas station. A snow globe with a tiny farmhouse and a tiny tornado inside. When you shook it, the tornado spun around and around.
“What’s this?” Frances asked.
“A tornado,” Mark said. “From Kansas.”
Ezoic
“Why would anybody want a tornado?”
Ezoic
“Because sometimes,” Mark said, “good things happen in tornadoes.”
Frances shook it. She watched the little tornado spin.
She smiled.
Mark visits her every week now.
We didn’t move to St. Louis. We still live in Denver. But Mark flies out every Saturday. Every single one. He took a job with his company’s St. Louis office two days a week, so he can be there.
