Just borrowed toys and cartoon arguments and missing shoes on a school morning.

The small, holy, ordinary emergencies of kids who know, all the way down, that the big things are somebody else’s job now.

Chapter 15 — After Me

The race car was the last box, and I saved it without quite meaning to, and I gave it to Ollie about a year after they came.

It was a remote-control car I’d bought for his fourth birthday, one of the ones from the closet, still in its faded paper.

He tore it open, and his whole face did the thing a kid’s face is supposed to do over a toy, unguarded, delighted, and then Josie came barreling over and grabbed for the controller the way little sisters do.