33 Alice first saw him when he was a half mile away, an apostrophe on the shining line of railroad tracks. He came angling down the embankment, a slither of dark movement. He disappeared briefly, the way night-moving animals do, following the path that raccoons and foxes made through the drying g...
The little boy took such unreserved pleasure in the world that he acquired an expression so sweetly placid that neighboring parents who came into his presence cowered with guilt. Or resented him: He’s like a cake with too much frosting. Then one day the good mother brought her son to daycare. For...