María went down the stairs ahead of him with one hand held out to the side, as if the girl might still need catching.

Emily stood at the bottom in her socks, the gray rabbit tucked under her chin, its left ear wound into a knot from all the twisting.

“Shoes,” María said.

“We’ll sit in the car for a few minutes and you can put them on there.”

From the landing, Thomas said something about his wristwatch.

Daniel told him he could pick it up later.

Out on the porch, under the light, María wrote the time on the back of her glove with a golf pencil, then wrote it again in her notepad, since the glove would come off.