But when Nina watched the four children play together, friendships formed in a matter of minutes, she wondered if, this time, they might hold on to their childhood gift of easy, unbridled empathy, even after they grew up. It’s certainly what Amie and Ben and Maura would have wanted for them, and how Nina would do her best to raise them.
An older woman took a seat next to Nina on the bench, pulled a magazine from her purse, and started to read. Nina recognized the past issue for having featured a profile of Jack Hunter, the famous nephew of an infamous president, whom Nina would always remember as having turned to Maura in his time of need. After confessing, with Maura’s help, to swapping strings with a friend in the army, Jack had enjoyed a few years as a minor celebrity. The article recounted his rapid fall, stripped of his military title, followed by his eventual rise, finally unencumbered, as it seemed. At the time of the interview, he was working at a nonprofit supporting veterans with PTSD, his wife expecting their second child.
The picture of Jack Hunter’s pregnant wife, in a corner of the magazine cover, vaguely reminded Nina of Maura’s old friend Lea, who had nearly given birth in Times Square, after the first of many Strung Together events. Willie and Midge still had playdates in the backyard with Lea’s twins, who were just a few years older than they were, while Nina and Lea’s brother kept watch from the terrace, both tending their sisters’ legacies.
Someday, Nina thought, these children would all have children of their own, born into a world with little memory of the time before the boxes, when Nina and the other long-stringers of her generation would retreat to the stillness of old age, reminiscing about the arrival of the chests like her own grandparents once spoke of the Second World War, a seismic shift that everyone else merely learned about in textbooks and novels. Something so unfathomable for the two young sisters reading in a bookshop, for the shy boy drawing buildings on a sketchpad, for the carefree woman singing karaoke at a bar, would someday be just another part of growing up.
But would people still look inside?
Nina’s colleagues had all been talking about the recent Gallup poll, the latest national survey about the strings. For the first time, the number of people deciding not to view their strings had risen significantly. More and more boxes were remaining closed, especially among the newest recipients. It might just be a trend, people theorized, they might all change their minds. But Nina wondered if it might be a sign. If, after fifteen years of chaos and fear, the world had seen enough strings—short and long and every measure in between—to know that any length was possible, and so, perhaps, the length didn’t matter. That the beginning and the end may have been chosen for us, the string already spun, but the middle had always been left undetermined, to be woven and shaped by us.
Of course, people still wondered, would always wonder, where the boxes came from, and why they were sent. Were they meant only for the individual, to use the knowledge of your own life span however you saw fit? Or were they offered to the world in communion, to prompt some greater global change? Some predicted their true power would only be unlocked once every single person had looked. Others had begun to believe that they were never even meant to be opened, that the gift was simply receiving any string at all.
And though her own string still stretched out long before her, Nina wondered if perhaps she herself could try living as if it were short, unafraid of the unexpected, embracing the chance to say yes.
She never imagined herself as a mother of two, yet these children were the light that had broken the darkness. Who knows what else awaited her? Perhaps she would finally agree to being set up on one of those dates her friends were always offering. Perhaps she would update her book with new stories. Perhaps she would take Willie and Midge on an adventure somewhere. Perhaps she would show them the world.
But for now, on a bench in Central Park, Nina simply willed her mind to rest, to focus on the present. She lifted herself up and joined her children on the playground, clasping their hands within hers, as she twirled them around and around.
And somewhere, a few blocks north of them, on the edge of the park and just out of earshot, a man on a bicycle pedaled on, with a stereo strapped to his back. His legs labored more than they used to, the wheels turned a little more slowly. But the melody played as clearly as ever, and all the people walking around him, busy and distracted as always, paused for a second and turned their heads, trying to see where the music was coming from.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank everyone who played a part in the journey of this book, bringing a dream to fruition. The depth of my gratitude cannot be fully conveyed here.