I have thought since about how much I learned from my eight-year-old in that single small ruling about where a music box would live.

The adults in my family had only ever offered two postures toward a person who had hurt them: total embrace, which my mother wanted, the thing forgotten and the money resumed; or total refusal, which some corner of me wanted, the clean break, the blocked number, the gift sent back.

Lily, who had been given no theory of any of this, invented a third posture on the spot, out of nothing but her own clear instinct.

Keep the good thing.