Half of it on each side.

A gap you could not photograph.

A gap that looked, to a thirty-nine-year-old mother sitting on a sofa in a stranger’s living room with her heart full, like a chair with a bit of room in it for a girl to grow.

Part Sixteen: The Night We Felt Good

Jillian hugged us both on the porch.

She hugged us properly, for a long time, and she cried, and she said thank you about nine times, and she said she did not know what to say, and she asked me to write down our address so that she could do something, and I said absolutely not, and I meant it, and I was pleased with myself for meaning it.

We drove home with the empty carton in the back of the car.