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Share a funny story about Kimo. He never wants to wear clothes. I dont force him cause it would be hypocritical. Ask her if she wants to join next time. She says yes

Kimo's head lolls against the harness strap, milk-drunk and still humming, and Lena laughs before she speaks because the story is already forming and it is funny and she knows it is funny.

"He hates clothes," Lena says. "I put a onesie on him once. ONCE. He screamed like I was burning him. Not the hum — the actual scream. The full-body, back-arched, red-faced scream. I got it halfway up his arms and he went rigid. Like a board. I'm standing in the apartment holding a stiff screaming baby in a half-buttoned onesie and I thought — this is the most hypocritical thing I've ever done. I'm naked. I've been naked for months. My son is looking at me like — Mom, what are you doing to me."

Sina's laugh is the full laugh — the one that fills the phone, the one that probably fills the bungalow, the one that the three-year-old hears and starts laughing too for no reason.

"So I took it off," Lena says. "Took it right off. He stopped screaming immediately. The hum came back. He curled up against me and hummed and that was it. No more clothes. We're done."

"Never again," Sina says. She is still laughing.

"You learned your lesson."

"He learned ME. That kid knows exactly what he wants and what he wants is nothing on. He wants to be bare like his mother. Bare feet, bare chest, bare everything. I put him in the stroller this morning and he was naked and happy and the sun was on him and he slept twenty-three miles and woke up and hummed."

"He's your son," Sina says. The laugh is fading into something warmer.

"He is exactly your son."

"He's his father's son too. Aleki didn't wear shirts."

"Aleki didn't own shirts. He owned one shirt. For funerals. He wore it to his cousin's funeral and took it off in the parking lot afterward."

Lena laughs and the laugh is the big laugh — the one that moves her belly and shifts Kimo in the harness and wakes him for a moment and he hums and goes back to sleep. The truck is warm and the sun is coming through the windshield and the site is fifteen minutes away.

"Hey," Lena says. "You should come next time. The run. Come to my place, we'll do the thirty. You, me, Kimo in the stroller. Early morning. I'll make breakfast after."

The line is quiet for a different reason now. Not the laugh, not the impressed silence. The quiet of a woman who is being invited to something and the something matters.

"I haven't run since before the third one," Sina says. "That's four years."

"You don't have to do thirty. We'll do what you can do."

"I used to run ten miles. Before kids. Before Aleki. Ten miles every morning on the beach in American Samoa."

"Then you'll do ten and I'll do twenty more after. We'll start together."

"Yes," Sina says. "Yes. I want to."

The word is there — *yes* — and it is not a maybe or a we'll see. It is the yes of a woman who used to run ten miles barefoot on a beach in American Samoa and who stopped because life happened and who is being told she can start again. Lena pulls the truck onto the highway. Kimo hums against her chest. The site is ahead and the framing is waiting and Sina is coming to run.