Nickolas Butler

He'd never called a young man son before, and wondered suddendly if he'd ovverached, if he'd embarrassed Jay. A wave of emotion washed over him, alone in that dusty cab, and he thought about his lost son, and how, if he'd grown, he might have been about Jay's age now. What paths would he have chosen, what jobs, what women (or men) might he have fallen in love with? He imagined all the days they might have shared, and years: fishing on the Mississippi, deer hunting, baseball games, graduations, marriages, children... That abbreviated line of life, of opportunity, that had just disappeared...