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neck. The roof of the car had been driven hard into her head.
    "What do they think he was trying to get?" I had asked the reconstructionist a few days later, referring to the twenty-three-year-old. "Sunglasses?" I was aware that the truck driver had been heading west.
    "That's a good guess, but he didn't seem to have any sunglasses in the truck, and we never found a pair by the river."
    I remember nodding, waiting for him to continue. Finally the reconstructionist offered the two syllables that I had been unwilling to share with anyone until that moment in Carissa Lake's office, because they seemed to lessen the horror of both the young man's and my wife's deaths.
    "Tic Tacs," the reconstructionist had said. "He was probably trying to reach for his Tic Tacs."
    I even told Carissa how angry I'd gotten inside whenever anyone had told me to take comfort in the notion that Elizabeth had not suffered long: She may have been aware of the accident a split second before it occurred, people said, but no more than that. No more than a second or two.
    But that comfort held little value for the toddler whom I'd now be raising alone. She was a month beyond two when well-meaning people told me that sort of thing, and the only suffering she really understood was her own.
    "You and Abby aren't all that alone, are you? I don't get up to East Bartlett very often, but I've always envisioned it as a very close-knit community," Carissa said.
    "There are lots of people who help. Really, lots. And I need every single one of them. Her godparents only live a few houses away--though that's about half a mile, given where we live. And the church has been remarkable. I don't think I cooked a meal for three months after Elizabeth died. And now I have the preschool network to help, too. But the fact is, it's still just Abby and me in the mornings and evenings. I'm the one who's tickling her awake, or ironing her dresses, or helping her pour her cereal in the morning. I'm the one who's making sure she has a glass of water by her bed every night, as well as her beloved trolls and her Chapstick and whatever plastic monstrosity happened to fall out of her cereal box that day."
    "You sound angry."
    "Not at all: I love her madly. I have no idea what I would have done after Elizabeth's death without her. Just no idea. I'd probably have gone completely to pieces. Right now I'm just tired...."
    "And?"
    "And, I guess, feeling guilty because I didn't pick her up tonight at her usual time."
    "Where is she now?"
    "Having dinner with the family of her sixteen-year-old baby-sitter. She's about three blocks from here."
    "And you're really feeling guilty?"
    "I am."
    "What about grandparents, or aunts and uncles?"
    "Both of my parents have passed away," I said. "Cancer in my mother's case. Alzheimer's in my father's."
    "Your mother went first?"
    "She did."
    "And Elizabeth's parents?"
    "They live in Florida. I have a sister two hours away. In New Hampshire, near Dartmouth. That's where Abby and I spend most of our holidays."
    "Ever consider a nanny or housekeeper?"
    "I have, but it's complicated. There's no day care in East Bartlett, and I want Abby to be around other kids, so that means she has to be in the village of Bartlett during the day--where there is day care. And that, in turn, means a nanny would just be filling in around breakfast and dinnertime. And I want to have breakfast with Abby, so that just leaves the gap before dinner, and I've got that covered right here in the village: I've found people in town who'll look after her from the moment the day care closes until I get here from Burlington."
    "What about friends?"
    "Oh, she has plenty of friends. She has friends from day care, and Sunday school, and now preschool. The Sunday-school kids and preschool kids are pretty much the same batch. The East Bartlett batch. But then there's also this whole other batch from here in the village. In Bartlett. The day-care batch. But between Greta and Chloe and Cole and--"
    "I