He thought of Needles and Beeks and smiled sadly. They had saved his life. And in their own unique ways, they, together with Willy, had unearthed in him an inner strength he might never have discovered on his own.
He turned and looked at his mother, then at Michael, and a deep feeling of contentment settled over him, a contentment he hadn't known for many years. Who could have imagined that three horrific days would become a miraculous new beginning.
– Michael settled in behind the wheel and closed the door with a solid whump. He inserted the sapphire-crystal key and pressed the starter button.
"Hey, Mom…" Aaron said, over his shoulder. "Did Michael tell you about the old lady he saw pushing a wheelbarrow full of cats down the street?"
"No… I don't think so," she replied, amused by the question.
"Sounds like a good premise for your first novel," Michael said.
Aaron smiled at him thoughtfully then said to himself: And so it shall be!
"Anyway," he continued, "they were all different colored house cats, and it was raining and they were all wet, and, and — "
"What a load of crap," Willy said.
"— and there was this one cat, and he was the biggest cat in the whole world…"
Michael hit the throttle and everyone laughed along with Aaron as together they sped off into the night.
In the distance, sirens…