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Kitty Ballerina into the backpack, zipping it just to the stuffed animal’s neck, so she could see out. “You okay, Kitty Ballerina?”
    Julia answered in a high, squeaky Kitty Ballerina voice, “Okay!”
    Belinda grinned. A major victory for Julia.
    “Bye-bye, sugar pie,” Julia said to Kitty Ballerina. “Here’s your morning kiss.” She smacked Kitty Ballerina on the cheek.
    “Thank you, Julia!” Julia squeaked in Kitty Ballerina’s voice. “Love you!”
    “I love you, too, Kitty Ballerina,” Julia said as she helped Belinda into her pink fleece jacket. Taking Belinda’s hand, she led her out to their friends’ big red SUV. She lifted Belinda up to the seat and carefully buckled her in. “Buckled in, henny-pin. Here’s your morning kiss.” She smacked Belinda on her soft pink cheek. “Love you, Belinda. Thanks, Paula. You’re good to go! I’m picking you both up this afternoon, Belinda and Sarah. I’ll be waiting!” Sliding the door shut, she patted the SUV and headed back to the house.
    Inside, the morning spilled before her like sunshine through the windows. Downstairs, the Burrill wedding video lay on her desk, where it had to be edited, cut, matched with music, and spliced together into one seamless perfect hour that would capture for the newlyweds and their loved ones the magic of their day. Before Julia could turn to that, though, she had to put the house in order. So much had changed in the little girl’s life,
too
much, and if, by setting the chairs at familiar angles and arranging Miss Mouse perfectly on Belinda’s bed, Julia could make the world seem less frightening and more stable, well, she could do that, and gladly.
    But as she cleaned the kitchen and tidied the house, Julia was accompanied, as she often was, by a shadow, a gray, gloomy specter of her parents’ disappointment at the way she was spending her time. Her parents, both liberal lawyers, had hoped she’d do something meaningful with her time and intelligence. She was fortunate, her parents had reminded her daily; she could—she
should
—make the world a better place.
    In college, Julia had majored in political science, even though she hated it, and taken every photography course offered, because that was what she loved. She’d wanted, someday, to compile a book of photographs of the impoverished and marginalized that would bring tears of pity to the jaded wealthy, causing them to spill open their bank accounts and address the wrongs of the world. After college, she’d worked at odd jobs—Starbucks, Tower Records, Filene’s—and, on her time off, roamed the darker streets of Boston, taking photographs.
    Then her best friend had asked her to be the official photographer for her wedding. Julia took the formal, posed shots that would be secured in silver frames, and she also videotaped the wedding and reception, edited it imaginatively, and created such a gorgeous, effervescent record of the event that people watching laughed and cried and shouted with joy. Julia loved this kind of work, and almost at once she found herself in demand as a videographer. Her days were packed with birthday parties, retirement parties, weddings, anniversaries.
    Nice,
her parents thought, but hardly
significant
work.
    She’d met Tim Hathaway at a party. Tim was a dentist, the non-suicidal kind, he joked, an orthodontist, actually. As a boy, he’d had terrible buck teeth, and the skill of an orthodontist had changed his life. He enjoyed his work, how the precision of infinitely small procedures could work miracles of enormous personal magnitude. He was thirty-five, widowed, with a five-year-old daughter, Belinda.
    Tim’s wife Annette had died tragically young, of a swiftly moving cancer. Tim, burdened with sorrow and anxiety, was also, secretly, fraught with guilt, for only a few days before Annette was diagnosed with the cancer, he had asked her for a divorce, and she had heartbrokenly agreed. They had gotten married because it had seemed