We buried our little girl Elsie in the orchard within the rows of pear trees she used to run between.

To mark the spot, we planted a young sapling that still had a few years left to bear fruit.

She loved pears more than any child I'd ever met.

She'd eat them warm and mushy from the branch like it was the best thing she'd ever met. She'd eat them warm and mushy from the branch, like it was the

best thing she'd ever tasted. During harvest, she'd march around with the basket half a size,

pointing at which ones were, the good ones, like a tiny dictator. Ah, little helper. The morning it happened, she'd been headed outside to play, the same as always.

I remember the screen door creaked open, then shut, and I heard her humming to herself.

And then the quiet stretched too long. By lunchtime we couldn't find her.

Not in the yard, not in the house.

Marissa checked the barn.

I checked the orchards and yelled the name until my throat hurt.

And then I saw the shoe by the pond,

sideways in the mud.

Everything after that is a blur.

But that moment, the shoe, that's the part I still see when I close my eyes.

Marissa didn't talk for a while.

At night she'd curl up on her side of the bed with Elsie's pyjama shirt clutched to her chest. I lay beside her every night, helpless. I'd hold her hand

or rubber back while my own chest felt like it was caving in. Her sobs would start quietly,

while she was trying to hold them in for my sake,

and then they'd break loose, spilling out of her like a flood, and I'd just lay there while my

throat burned with the things I couldn't say. When it was over, and she'd gone still again, I'd pressed my lips to her forehead and whisper

something dumb and small like, it's okay, I've got you.

...