“I wish she hadn’t needed me to learn that.”

“She didn’t need you to become her lesson.

She liked you.

Those are different things.”

We sat on the floor among unpacked books.

Paige told me stories from when they were children.

Chloe once organized a fundraiser for a classmate’s dog and bought the dog a birthday cake before remembering that the boy’s family needed grocery money.

Another time, she convinced her father that a broken aquarium had been caused by an imaginary earthquake.