“Only a little.”
“All it takes is alittleto warrant an ER visit.”
She twisted to look at me, her curls wild around her face, dirt streaking her face. “If I fall, I just get back up.”
“If you fall from the wrong height, you can’t always get back up immediately.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Daddy says I could break my arm,” she said.
“That’s true.”
“But it can be fixed.”
“Usually.”
“With a cast?”
“Usually.”
“And everyone writes their name on it?”
“Possibly.”
She brightened. “That sounds like so much fun.”
I extended the parasol arm and set the handle into the ground beside me, giving her my full attention. “Billie.”
She looked back at the centipede, but I waited until she returned to me.
“That’s one possible outcome,” I said. “Another possible outcome is that the injury hurts a great deal. You may need to go to the hospital. Your father may be frightened. Your brother and sister may be frightened. You may not be able to run or climb or dig for some time.”
Her expression shifted slightly.
“I don’t want them to be frightened,” she said.
“I know.”
“I just want to know things.”
As simple as that explanation was, it was spot-on. Billie lived inside a body that was too small for all her questions, and a world full of edges she kept testing because somewhere inside her she understood something life-changing had happened before she was old enough to remember it.
Her siblings grieved a mother. Billie grieved not knowingwhoto grieve.
That was a loneliness adults often overlooked.
“I understand wanting to know things,” I said. “But there are ways to learn that don’t require terrifying everyone who loves you.”
She tilted her head. “Like experiments?”
“Yes. Controlled experiments.”
“What’s controlled?” she asked.
“It means we decide what danger is acceptable before beginning.”
The seriousness on Billie’s face made her look older, then in the next instant, she was five again as she wiped her nose with the back of her muddy hand. “So I can still do danger?”
“Small danger. Chosen danger. Not surprise danger.”
