“You were just a little girl.”

Sitting on the curb, he gave me the afternoon I had punished myself with for two decades, and he gave it without turning it into a spectacle.

Eleanor had picked me up from school.

I had seen my father across a busy avenue, outside the grocery, and I had wanted the street to move faster than the light.

When I stepped forward, a driver did not stop.

My mother saw the car before I did.