Danny laughed. It came out wet and broken. He knelt down on the sidewalk so he was eye level with her.
“So did you,” he said.
“You had bandages.”
“I did.”
“You held my hand.”
“I did.”
“I sang to Mr. Hops.”
“You did.” Danny wiped his eyes. “‘You Are My Sunshine.’ I still remember all the words.”
Ellie looked at him for a long moment. Very serious.
Then she reached up and put her small hand on his cheek. On the scar.
“Does it still hurt?” she asked.
Danny closed his eyes.
“Not right now,” he said.
And my granddaughter put her arms around the boy her mother died saving.
And held on.
I sat on my front steps in my bathrobe and watched them.
And the box I’d nailed shut three years ago came open.
All at once.
I cried like I hadn’t cried since the night the trooper came to my door. Big, ugly, gasping sobs. Sitting on the front steps of the house Hank built, in front of a lawyer and a stranger and the whole of Pickett Street.
