“It’s alright, my love,” I said.
“Accidents are easy to clean up.
It’s the other kind of hurt that takes longer — but that heals too.
I promise you it heals.”
She threw her arms around me.
“Is this really our forever home, Mommy?”
I looked through the window to where my father was hanging framed photographs in the hall — our family, restored, on the walls of a house we had chosen.
“Yes, sweetheart,” I said.
“Because in this house, nobody ever has to make themselves small so that someone else can feel big.”
She ran out into the sunlit garden, and my father pretended he couldn’t quite catch her.