I got my arms all the way around her and pulled her in against my chest.” Her voice was steady now, the steadiness of a thing recited to oneself many times over many years.

“And I turned to go back the way I’d come.

And the hallway was gone.

Just — a wall of fire, where I’d crawled in.

The only way out was forward, through the front of the house, through the porch, and the porch was burning.” She looked at me.

“So I did the only thing there was to do.

I pinned her little face against my chest, so she wouldn’t breathe the worst of it and wouldn’t see it.

And I turned my back to the flames, and I walked out backward, so that whatever the fire did, it would do to me and not to her.” I could not speak.