little girl is the reason I’m standing here.”
Nolan stared at her.
“How old are you?”
Elsie sighed.
“Everybody keeps asking that.”
The Truth at Home
Nolan drove Elsie back to the trailer park before her mother finished her shift.
But her mother, Claire Warren, was already home.
She stood in the doorway in her diner uniform, her face pale with worry.
“Elsie May Warren,” she said. “Inside. Now.”
Elsie didn’t lie.
She sat at the kitchen table and told her mother everything from the beginning — the dog, the oak
