“He thanked us three times,” she said.

“He seemed embarrassed to need it.”

Owen wrote that down.

Shame was not evidence of wrongdoing, but sometimes it explained why a person would struggle silently until a small problem became dangerous.

At the hospital, Ashley awakened long enough to ask for a pencil.

Helen brought paper.

Ashley drew the blue pickup, an orange sun, and two stick figures holding hands.

Then she added a third figure beside them, smaller and rounder.