Abby had told them that the first thirteen miles would be the most challenging, and Abby hadn’t lied. The terrain was easy enough, flat and paved and smooth, but those very things meant that the bike path was completely jammed. There were people on sleek racing bikes and bulky rented bikes and little kids on one-wheeled bikes with seats attached to the backs of real bikes, pedaled by their parents. Signs at regular intervals read NO MOTOR VEHICLES/E-BIKES/E-SCOOTERS, but Lily had seen examples of the latter two, plus people on Rollerblades, which were allowed, and motorized unicycles with light-up neon wheels, which probably were not. Messengers wearing bulky insulated DoorDash backpacks zipped past, weaving through the slower riders, calling, “On your left!” as they rocketed by, so close that Lily could feel the wind rush against her in their wake. Little kids went caroming from one side of the path to the other on push bikes or bikes with training wheels, their helmeted heads looking too big for their bodies, usually with a parent or two in their wake calling out instructions, telling Colton or Hazel to get out of the way, to be careful, to ride on the right, no, not that right, the other one! The only good news was that pedestrians had their own paths. Whenever Lily managed a glance sideways, she could see them: runners and walkers and people with dogs on leashes, all of them moving briskly along.
Where was Morgan? How far had they gone? Were they close to getting out of the city yet? Lily knew she could check her odometer, but she was scared to look down. It felt like they’d been riding for hours. Except they still hadn’t gone under the George Washington Bridge, which meant that, as unbelievable as it seemed, they were still in Manhattan, and they hadn’t even covered the first thirteen miles.
Lily felt like she could barely force air into her lungs. Her hands, inside her riding gloves, were slick with sweat, and her padded bike shorts had gotten bunched up, with the padding slid off to one side. Her nose itched, but she was too afraid to let go of the handlebars to scratch it.
You’re fine, she thought, repeating the words like a mantra. You got this. You’re fine. You can do this.
One of the older ladies, the short one with bright blue eyes, rode up alongside of her. “You’re Lily, right? Are you doing okay?” she asked, sounding sympathetic. Lily wondered how lost she must look, if she was getting sympathy from the seventy-five-plus set. She managed a nod and a clenched-toothed smile.
“It’ll get easier. I promise,” the woman said. “And it’s wonderful that you’re doing this with your daughter.”
Lily nodded again.
“Enjoy it,” said the woman. She smiled, and, still pedaling, took her hands off the handlebars （How? wondered Lily. How?） and stretched them up over her head, leaning first left, then right. “When my kids were young, people would tell me that the days are long but the years are short, and I’d think they were crazy. It all felt so endless. I thought I’d be changing diapers for the rest of my life!”
Lily nodded. She could remember being a new mother, so tied to the rhythm of Morgan’s waking and sleeping and eating that she’d lost all sense of herself as an independent person, and felt like she’d turned into a servant-slash-feeding station that existed solely for her daughter’s nourishment and care. But she’d loved those years, when Morgan had been small, when Morgan had needed her, when Lily knew how to solve all of her daughter’s problems, when any pain or heartache could be banished with a bottle or a cookie or a Band-Aid and a kiss. She remembered how Morgan used to wake up early, at four or five in the morning. She’d fuss a little, and Lily would go to collect her. Morgan would be lying in her crib, looking around, blinking like a wise little owl in stretchy pink footie pajamas. Lily would change her and carry her back to bed. She’d sit with her back against the headboard and Morgan warm in her arms, nursing contentedly, then staring up at her with her fathomless dark eyes while Don slept beside them, on his belly with his arms flung wide and one leg kicked free of the covers. This is all I ever wanted, Lily would think. She would reflect on the dark times she’d endured, the bad things that had happened: her father, who’d had a temper, her mother, who’d been so worn down by marriage and work and Lily’s three brothers that she had no time or energy left by the time Lily came along. She’d think, too, about the handful of desperate weeks right before she’d started college, and tell herself that those things had served to bring her to this place. I’m so blessed, Lily would think, with her daughter in her arms. I’m so lucky. I hope things never change.