Then she turned back to the sprinkler and ran straight through it, and did not look at the driveway again.

Danny saw it too.

She used to look over there every few minutes, he said quietly, and I said, she does not have to anymore, and that was the entire victory, right there, smaller than any confrontation and larger than all of them.

Later she came over with her paper crown gone soft at the edges from a whole afternoon of handling, and asked where it should go, and I said her treasure box, and she said, not the refrigerator, and I said not this one, and she carried it inside to put it away with the small things she had chosen to keep.

Chapter 26 — I Sent Nothing