IONETWOTHREE

I

When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.

—Charlotte Bront?, Jane Eyre

We’re in the woods, just the two of us. I have on my best sneakers, the ones with rainbow laces and the place on the back that Mason chewed through when he was just a puppy. Her steps are bigger than mine, but it’s a game—I try to jump into the hole her shoes leave behind. I’m a frog; I’m a kangaroo; I’m magic.

When I walk, it sounds like cereal getting poured for breakfast.

Crunch. “My legs hurt,” I tell her.

“It’s just a little bit longer.”

“I don’t want to walk,” I say, and I sit right there, because if I don’t move she won’t either.

She leans down and points, but the trees are like the legs of tall people I can’t see around. “Do you see it yet?” she asks me.

I shake my head. Even if I could see it, I would have told her I couldn’t.

She picks me up and puts me on her shoulders. “The pond,” she says. “Can you see the pond?”

From up here, I can. It is a piece of sky, lying on the ground.

When Heaven breaks, who fixes it?