How often her mother said that, as if it were their last hope, a white ring tossed onto the waves. She tried to say the things they liked to hear: who got A’s, who got in trouble. But every night she failed. Such an uncompelling child, wholly unable, night after night, to keep her parents afloat. And then the poem slipped out of the spelling book and her mother snatched it up before she could. What’s this? Her parents’ eyes met. If they’d been wolves, they
