Then I heard the laughter. It came from a house on the street behind us. The clear voices of children, two, maybe three, then a man’s—a father? They were playing in the backyard. Not a game, exactly, but an embodiment of vague excitement, the kind known only to very young children, where delight rushes through them simply by running across an empty field not yet recognized as a tiny backyard in a shitty part of town.
