"Are you kidding?" said Nora. "It's in my suitcase. The pocket in the lid." She looked at Renee. "The floral tape held. I tested it."
"It always holds," said Renee. "It's not pretty. But it holds."
They stood at the rail, the three of them, holding their gliders up into the wind.
"Okay," said Nora. "On three. Mom—"
Both of them turned their heads.
Nora laughed, really laughed, for the first time Renee could remember since October, a loud undignified bark that the wind took away over the trees. "Oh my God. That's going to be a problem. That is going to be so inefficient."
"You'll figure something out," Dana said. "You're the valedictorian."
"I'll figure something out." Nora wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. "One. Two."
"Throw it hard, baby," said Renee and Dana at the same moment, and then stared at each other, and Nora threw.
They all threw. The three gliders went out from the top of the Column into the blue, and caught the wind, and climbed for a second, all three of them, higher than they had any right to, and then banked and turned and came looping slowly down over the treetops in long lazy spirals, one and then another and then the last, toward the grass of the park below, where a small boy in a yellow raincoat on that cloudless day was already running across the lawn with his arms wide open to catch whichever one came down to him first.