I stood at the kitchen sink and looked out the window at the two of them on the back steps. The girl who sang to a stuffed bunny on the side of the highway. And the boy who held her hand.
I thought about that one shameful second in the candy aisle at Walmart. When I held a forty-two-thousand-dollar ring in my hand and thought about walking out the door.
I think about it a lot.
If I’d kept it, I would have fixed the roof. I would have bought shoes and pills. I would have had a year, maybe two, without counting every penny.
And I never would have known.
I never would have known about the fund. Or the eleven letters. Or the fire boy who wasn’t a nightmare. I never would have known that my daughter’s last words were I’ve got you. I never would have stopped hating a twelve-year-old boy who did nothing wrong except survive.
