start time now

I can see us walking through the mall, passing the glass storefronts laughing.  I can feel Beach's excitement beside me.  

Time is ticking, but we don't know it yet. 

It's not about spending money, but yes, I had just decided to give my daughter a gift. She was wrapped inside the love of it like a fuzzy jacket. Smiling, the paper bag with its tissue crown swinging in her hand. Still enjoying the polished sweetness of the women of the Bare Minerals Shop like pieces of strawberry candy. 

What had I bought for her? Their three-piece skincare package, a loose powder, and a concealer stick. The excitement and the appreciation are about getting something new, whole, and decedent. Something she would never have dared to ask for. 

We pass a group of men in dark clothing, and I think of the week we have had, of my neighbors and the lingering threat they pose, but not here, I breathe. We are having fun, and for the first time in days, my head is not pounding... not here.  

Time is ticking.

I paused to see a $24 t-shirt that reads Death before Decaf. Beach shows me a pair of socks that look like sharks.

We stop at Pacsun to see the contents of my 7th grade closet out for display. Pacsun, the store that on Christmas Eve Beach picked out two pairs of pants believing they were buy-one-get-one-free. Luckily, I sent her off to get lunch at the food court while I paid. Turned out, they were not buy-one-get-one-free.  She would have never asked for them had she known, and I never would have agreed to buy them. But I bought them anyway, not wanting to break her heart.    

Being there remembering it makes me sad. I step away while she gazes at the racks. I stare a second at the pen of ride-on autonomic animals and think I want a photo of them in all their ridiculousness, but for some reason, I don't take it.  

Beach joins me. As we pass the breezeway doors, I ask Beach what time it is.  

It is 1:25.  

We step into Dillard's.

I ask her to send a message to let her friends know we will be arriving early unless there is anything else she wants to see... we stop for just a moment lingering at the front of the store. She says no, squeezing the bag in her hand a little tighter. She is too grateful to ask anything else of me. 

We walk under the bright lights and around the glass cases in the perfumed air. I touch the shirts in the men's section like it is a petting zoo.

We walk out of the mall and into the southeast parking lot; it is 1:29. 

[STOP TIME] 

All summer, I have been dropping and picking up at the mall. I enter the same way all summer, park in the same row, and enter/exit through the same doors. For some reason today, I turned into the mall one entrance early and parked one section over, shifting the doors we would use to enter and exit the mall.

That nondecision, that strange chance, took us directly out of the line of fire.  

From my house, I watched the NEWS recounting the aftermath of the shooting. One of the Bare Minerals store clerks retells the terror inside the mall. I wondered if she wondered about us. The clerks had been so charmed by Beach and her sweet-softness. Won over by her attempts to help me pay the bill with the contents of her little wallet. So gracious, so kind, such a great kid.       

When Alexis and Conner were little, I went to bed every night asking myself, if this was the last day we had together, did I do all that I could have done to show them they were loved? 

I know we were never really in danger. But had it been different...

Walking beside my daughter, she knew she was loved. That is something time can't take away.