Five years later, Hope starts kindergarten on a Tuesday.
She walks in like she owns the place. Which — given that Hope has never once entered a room with anything less than full conviction — is exactly right. She has her backpack, which she selected herself after a research process that involved visiting four stores and rejecting twelve options before landing on a dark green one with a fox on it because, as she explained, foxes are smart and fast and she intends to be both.
She does not look back at us.
Damien and I stand at the kindergarten gate with Lily on one side and the new baby on the other — our son, six months old, named James after no one, just because it was the name we kept coming back to and eventually stopped arguing with — and we watch Hope walk into her classroom without a backward glance.
