She considered that, then returned to the puzzle they were assembling.

I stood in the doorway and felt a quiet gratitude for an answer that was neither a lie nor a demand for forgiveness.

PART 21: The Next Seven Years

Time did not rewrite the beginning of our story, but it changed which parts of it we talked about most.

June entered middle school with a habit of asking difficult questions in rooms where adults had hoped to avoid them.

She built elaborate science projects, preferred old-fashioned paper maps to navigation apps, and once organized her classmates to persuade the school to keep a small patch of wildflowers instead of replacing it with decorative stones.