Her voice took on an authority borrowed, to the subtlest inflection, from the boy. Her recitation seemed to calm the boy’s mother—Belle, this strange animal in her house—and she herself felt calmer. How tranquilizing it was to arm yourself with information, how consoling to unpack the facts and then plant them like fence pickets, building a sturdy pen in which you stood alone, cosseted against human fallibility. She missed him awfully.
