My father, Stan, leaned forward, his face granite.

“Did that boy do you wrong?” “Yes, Dad.” “Then you never look back in his direction.” My mother scolded him gently, but he gripped my hand.

“Listen to me.

You can survive poverty and exhaustion and failure.

You cannot let another person walk across your soul.

You dust off your knees and you keep going.” My eyes stung, and the last shadow of the Crandall family lifted off me there on the porch.