Nobody Has to Bleed to Be Heard
And Noah laughed — properly, out of nowhere, the first real laugh anyone had heard out of him in three weeks — and Chloe, standing behind him in the doorway, put her hand flat against the wall to hold herself up.
And about twenty minutes after that, Alma said, “There’s a closet.”
Teresa said, “Mamá.”
“He is thirteen.
He can see a closet.”
She took him down the hall and opened it, and Chloe and I stood in the doorway of the bedroom and looked at a shelf with thirteen wrapped presents on it.