Her life, when you got down to the hard facts, was not about what she had done, or had been, or had survived, but what she hadn’t. It wasn’t about the fact she’d won the state spelling bee when she was six, or that she’d succeeded on Jeopardy against adults at twelve, or even that she had not one, but three college degrees by the time she was fifteen. No, her life was about Tucker and Melinda and the three-color mutt, and that one winter day when everything changed.

Everything since was just fog and dreams and she was really still just five and a half inside, no matter how old they told her she was. Hovering there in that one moment, like an insect in amber, waiting for something.

And then it happened…