Eve arrived at the statue in the center of the park. She didn’t see Julian, but it was a great vantage point from which she could look out over the whole park. As she stood there, trying to search for the man she loved, a woman came by, towing a little girl about six years old along. The small Asian girl broke away from her mother and stuck her tongue out at her as she raced around the statue, her pigtails flying in the wind. “Sandy, you come back here!” her mother cried after her.
The child ran right smack into Eve, nearly knocking her down. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the mother apologized, grabbing her daughter firmly by the arm. “Sandy, I told you that you had better behave. First, you kicked that nice man in the shins, and now this. That does it!”
Eve’s ears perked up upon hearing about some man getting kicked. “Um, ma’am, did your daughter just kick a man here in the park - a man in his fifties with graying hair and a really nice voice?”
“That sounds like the same man,” the woman said. “He took off after my daughter kicked him. And who could blame him?”
“I was just trying to show you one of my karate kicks,” Sandy argued.
“Oh, I’ll show you my karate kick when I get you home,” her mother said. “Good day, ma’am.”
Eve shook her head as her eyes followed the pair. ‘That woman is going to have her hands full in a few years,’ she thought. Then she smiled. ‘That girl does remind me so much of my Simone at that age…’
Eve looked around, trying to decide where Julian might have gone after being kicked.