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“Yes”

“Why didn’t you just say yes?”

Elsa sighed “Your brother has no shoes There’s no randparents won’t leave All I saere reasons not to go”

“I got here, and I didn’t knohere to go He didn’t want me to know”

“I know”

Elsa touched her daughter’s back

Loreda yanked sideways and scuttled away from the touch

Elsa brought her hand back and sat there, knowing there was nothing she could say to fix this breach with her daughter Rafe had abandoned them both, walked out on his children and his responsibilities, and it was still Elsa whom Loreda blamed

THAT NIGHT, AFTER THE storm quieted, Elsa drove back to the faret herself and the children fed, and finally she tucked the in front of anyone It felt like a major triumph In the hours after Rafe’s abandoner that showed itself in outbursts in Italian Loreda’s despair had left hermeal, and Ant’s confusion was painful to see Tony made eye contact with no one

It occurred to Elsa as she walked into her bedroo time, hadn’t bothered to even respond when spoken to The pain of hi up more and more space

There was no wind outside now, no forces of nature trying to break down the walls Only silence An occasional coyote howl, an every-now-and-then scurrying of so else

Elsa walked to the chest of drawers beneath theShe opened Rafe’s drawer to look at the only shirt he’d left behind All she had of him now

She picked it up, a pale blue chambray with brass snaps She’d made it for him one Christmas There was still a small brownish-red mark of her blood on one cuff, where she’d poked herself in the sewing

She wrapped the shirt around her neck as if it were a scarf and walked ai nowhere Maybe she would start walking and never stop … or never take this scarf off until one day, when she was old and gray, some child would ask about the crazy woman ore a shirt for a scarf and she would say she couldn’t recall how it had begun or whose shirt it was