Excerpt: In The Dark Valley

I am out in Washington City, on my own. Mot is back in the Motel resting. He seems quite tired today. The jetlag has been hard to get over. We are heading on to Alaska in two days, I think. Mot only brought me here for a history trip. Now he seems to want to do so little.
Yesterday we seemed to go everywhere; the Abraham Lincoln memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the White House, the Holocaust museum and the Washington City monument. It was amazing. To sit on Abe Lincoln’s knee and feel the importance of the site for so many people. It is one of the most alive, intense and vibrant places Mot has ever taken me to.
It is so unusual to be out anywhere without Mot close by. He does not even really mind clothes or shoe shopping. It is music stores he will not enter with me. He never gets far past classical and hymns, and mumbles about people who have modern music at funerals.
I walk into an air-conditioned mall. I order a berry smoothie and sit in the food court to watch the bustle of the shops and central mall.