Rule one: Don’t leave halfway through.

He read it twice before he smiled.

PART 17: The First Birthday He Could Attend

June’s seventh birthday approached with the significance that birthdays acquire after a family has been separated by years rather than miles.

She wanted a backyard party with lemonade, paper lanterns, and a science experiment involving baking soda that Nora firmly forbade indoors.

She also wanted Warren to come.

“Not for the whole day,” she told me.