This Glittering World Read Online Free PDF Page A

Sara. There was no way to share that sort of grief with someone who had never known sadness. It would be like trying to explain the color red to a blind man. Trying to describe snow to someone who has never felt cold.
    And so he held on to this secret, kept it folded into tiny squares inside his pocket. Sometimes he could forget it was there, on good days. But when he spoke to Shadi that night at the hospital, it was as though she had found it, unfolded it and smoothed the worn, soft creases. As though she were asking him to share this ragged grief.
    He didn’t know how to tell Sara, how to explain this sudden urgent need to console a stranger. He could never have articulated the feeling that this was somehow serendipitous, that there might be a reason he was the one who found the kid. He knew Sara would never understand, was incapable of comprehending the new sense of purpose that swelled in his chest like a storm.
    And so when Shadi Begay sent an e-mail with the details about the services, Ben lied. He said he was going down to Phoenix with Hippo to look at camper shells for Hippo’s truck, and instead drove two hundred desolate miles to Chinle for the funeral.

B en bought his truck as a gift for himself the day he graduated from Georgetown. Little did he know then that the PhD he planned to get would likely never make him enough money to pay the truck off. It was a 1952 Chevy pickup, completely restored, the color of a candy apple. The guy who sold it to him had tears in his eyes as Ben drove away. He and Maude had driven all the way from DC to Flagstaff in this truck, windows rolled down, both of their noses to the wind. Since then, it had seen eight Flagstaff winters, and thousands of miles. He figured he might drive this truck to his grave. If he could, he’d take it with him.
    Now, Ben watched in the rearview mirror as the San Francisco Peaks disappeared behind him. The sun had come out on Tuesday morning and quickly melted the snow from the roads, as it always does in Flagstaff. The snow would remain on the Peaks, though, dappling the ashen gray in white. He yanked his sunglasses from the glove box and put them on, glancing at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He’d been thinking about growing a beard for a couple of weeks now, despite Sara’s obvious lack of enthusiasm. Or, perhaps, because of it. This morning he’d shaved the few prickly whiskers that had sprouted up like spines on a cactus.
    He thought about his kids showing up to his 8:00 A.M. class, finding the note he’d written in Sharpie on a piece of notebook paper. It had been too early to have anybody in the History Department do it, so he’d double-parked and run into the building like a bandit, sticking notes on the two classrooms where he taught, Prof Bailey’s US History to 1865 Class Canceled Today: Family Emergency.
    He’d told Sara he was going into his office early to grade papers and that he and Hippo were leaving for Phoenix right after his second class. He promised he’d be home sometime later tonight. He left her still sleeping, getting dressed in the dark. His suit, which he hadn’t worn since he’d had his interview at school, was already in the truck.
    Ben still wasn’t sure why he didn’t just tell Sara he was going to the funeral. He found himself doing this a lot lately, lying about where he was and what he was doing even if he had nothing to hide: telling her he was getting a burrito at Ralberto’s when he was really sitting next door at Crystal Creek with a turkey sub. Saying he was going to meet Hippo for a drink and instead ducking into the movie theater and watching an entire movie alone. Since the engagement, he’d found his actual life and the one he fabricated becoming two entirely different things.
    He glanced down at his cell phone and saw that the reception had already disappeared. He hoped Sara would be too busy today to call him. He hoped she wouldn’t need him for anything.
    According to the map, Chinle