As Sabrina drove away, Ava pressed her tiny hand against the window and laughed. I raised my own hand in return. Sabrina had promised she’d be back in one hour.

Somehow, she still kept that promise.

For eleven days, everyone believed a desperate mother had abandoned her child. The truth was much simpler, I decided, standing on that porch in the last of the light.

She hadn’t been leaving her daughter behind. She had been bringing her home.

I said that sentence a great deal over the following year. To Helen. At church. Once to a reporter from the county paper who wanted the nice version.

It took me rather longer to notice everything it left out.