Hugo & Rose by Bridget Foley

isn’t who you think he is is to introduce yourself to him.”
    Introduce yourself? Rose couldn’t really wrap her brain around the idea. One introduces oneself to people at weddings, to insurance salesmen, to neighbors. One doesn’t just walk up to strangers and hold out one’s hand. “Hi, my name is Rose and I’ve been stalking you for weeks.”
    And this man was a stranger. Though she knew details about him, the schedule of his life, he was no more to her than any other person in the world. She didn’t even know his name. He was just some guy, who through some trick of the genetic lottery looked an awful lot like someone she had made up in her mind.
    â€œIf I do this … then what? What happens?”
    â€œYou will confirm that he is just a man. That he is not Hugo. You will be able to detach from these obsessive thoughts and go back to your normal life.”
    And my normal thoughts, thought Rose.
    She had been so occupied with this man, the project of following him, that it had been weeks since she had thought about what a disappointment she was. What a failure she was. What a waste of sad flesh she was.
    It had been nice, obsessing about someone else instead of her own failings.
    A holiday from herself.
    But still, it had to stop.
    Rose just wasn’t sure that letting him see her was the way. It felt perilous—though what the danger was, she had no idea.
    Her stomach was still hard as stone when she drove away from Naomi’s office.
    *   *   *
    Isaac was giving the hard sales pitch as Rose got them ready for school. Talking a mile a minute: “Ben Winters said if I had a bike, then this summer we could ride on the trails by the river. And Teddy Kosar said he got a bike when he was five. And Ben said he got his when he was three, but I don’t believe him.”
    â€œI don’t believe him either.” Adam was trying to be helpful.
    Oh, Lord, thought Rose. Again with the bikes.
    Isaac was refusing to act as he had in the past. Until now he had never settled for long on what toy he most desired; the constantly shifting landscape of greed made Christmas shopping difficult and birthday shopping a nightmare. At Christmastime Rose combated this proclivity by making the boys write letters to Santa in the first week of December. That way when they (inevitably) changed their minds about what they wanted, she could remind them they had written to Santa about their old heart’s desire and that he wasn’t likely to be able to read their minds.
    That said, this did not keep Rose from going shopping on Christmas Eve, attempting to put whatever newer better cooler thing they craved into Santa’s sack. But at least if she failed, she had managed to curb their expectations and avoid a little bit of Christmas-morning disappointment.
    Usually this far out from “B-day” Isaac would have changed his mind five or six times already, leaping from the latest gaming system to whatever new piece of masculine crap Nerf was selling and back again.
    But, to Rose’s chagrin, the bike was sticking.
    Rose had left toy catalogs on the kitchen table in hopes of something new catching Zackie’s eye. Instead of fast-forwarding through the ads flanking the boys’ favorite shows on the DVR as she usually did, she had let them play, steeping the boys in their bright commercial flogging.
    But still the bike stuck … though Zackie had a few fresh ideas for what he’d like from his grandparents.
    Finally Rose just told him to pick something else.
    â€œBut why?” he’d asked.
    She had shown him the scar buried in her hair. She had told him the story of that day when Papa had shown her how to ride a bicycle.
    â€œBicycles are dangerous, sweetie. And I don’t know what I would do if anything ever happened to you. I just want you to wait a couple more years.”
    â€œHow much longer?”
    â€œMaybe when you’re