Unbidden
A One-Sentence Story
Emily was only five—a slim, lively little girl with straight black hair held back with a red plastic barrette, wearing a red jumper and red tights patterned with white hearts—and he didn’t know her very well but as he was helping her climb over a fallen tree on the slippery, muddy trail that winter day (he had brought her family, who were visiting from the East Coast, to the Muir Woods, and her father was up ahead with Emily’s older brother), she took him by the hand, and the tender innocence of her touch shot straight through to his heart, for how long had it been since he had held a little girl’s hand, he wondered—his own daughter was sixteen now—and what did this child see in him that made her trust him so easily, and then after they had both resumed walking along the path under those towering, enigmatic redwoods, with long shafts of ethereal winter sunlight pouring down between their dense branches, she took his hand again, not out of any need for help this time, but out of sheer affection it seemed, and he felt that sharp pang once more because you could do all the right things, he thought, you could love your own children with a fierceness that shook you to your bones and you could give your heart completely to just one woman your whole life long (once, in the back of a taxi, there had been ten seconds when he had come close to infidelity—he was on a business trip, and had been to dinner with a colleague, a beautiful woman with lovely long hair and dark almond eyes, and between the two of them they had drunk two bottles of wine, and when she put her hand on his leg and told the taxi driver to take them both back to her hotel, he had briefly assented, knowing exactly where that would lead, but then, ten seconds later, he said no to the taxi driver, no, take her to her hotel first and then drop me off at mine afterwards), but still you could never be sure when a moment of pure love would come back to you, unbidden.
love your stories!
xo,
Bob