So she took the real medicine out of the trash, and she read her brother’s name on it, and she did not tell anyone, because she had watched what happened when I told people — she had watched her mother be disbelieved, over and over, in that house — and she had drawn the only sensible conclusion a small person could draw.

She hid it.

She carried it around in her teddy bear for days, this enormous secret, waiting, the way a child waits, for the right moment and the right person.

And she chose a doctor, in an office, with the door open.

She chose better than I had known how to.

I will spend the rest of my life being humbled by that.

Chapter 3 — Nearly Full