“Okay,” I said, and bumped his shoulder with mine.
“You can’t keep me in the dark when she needs help.”
He laughed, a little wetly. It was enough.
***
Two weeks later I pulled into the camp lot and waited by the car.
Greta came tearing across the grass, tired and filthy, with a lopsided clay thing in her hands that I think was supposed to be a turtle.
“Mom! Mom! I learned to canoe, and I only tipped once, and the lake was freezing, and I made this, and there was a thing with glow sticks…”
Two weeks later I pulled into the camp lot and waited by the car.
She talked for the first twenty minutes of the drive.
Camp hadn’t been magic. She hadn’t made friends with those girls, and she never would.
