“Your dad’s house, it was one of the ones that got hit,” he said. “Oh.” Something leaden was growing in Charlie’s chest. “I didn’t know.” “You really didn’t even go back to check?” “I didn’t think of it,” Charlie said. That’s not true. She’d thought a thousand times of going back to her father’s house. But it had never occurred to her that the house might have been hit in the storm. In her mind, it was impregnable, unchanging. It would always be there, just as her father had left it. She closed her eyes and pictured it. The front steps sagged in disrepair, but the house itself stood like a
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