Nana told my father that I could not be trusted anywhere near the main road, that I was the kind of child who would drift off and be lost or struck, and the story grew a little each time she told it until the mailbox was the highway and the one evening was a pattern.

I never corrected it.

When my father came home gray-faced and worn from his shifts, I let the story stand, and I told myself that letting it stand was a kindness, a way of keeping the peace in a house that did not have much peace to spare.

I was ten.

I did not yet know that there are silences that keep the peace and silences that only keep the lie, and that they can feel exactly the same from the inside while you are choosing them.

That is the thing I most want anyone to understand about how it happened.