He laid it against the cut edge of my clipping.
The two halves met exactly.
A young man in a firefighter’s coat, soot on his cheek, carrying a baby out of a ditch in a yellow blanket. The caption beneath it, which I had cut away and never read: Volunteer firefighter Mark Amory, 31, carries an infant from the wreck on County Road 12.
“Mrs. Eastwood,” he said quietly. “Seven years ago I carried your daughter out of that car.”
Wynne looked up at him.
“I’ve been carrying something else ever since,” he said. “Something her father asked me to pass on. And I never knew where to find them.”
Chapter 2: Why He Locked the Door
I must tell you what Mr. Amory did next, because it is the reason I trust him.
He turned around and faced twenty-two second-graders, who were sitting very straight at their desks with their hands folded, in the manner of children who have realized they are in the middle of something enormous and are doing their best not to be the reason it stops.
“Boys and girls,” he said. “I locked the door, and I want to tell you why. A locked door at school can be a scary thing, and nobody in this room is in trouble. I locked it because I need two minutes of quiet, and I didn’t want anybody walking in. That’s all.”
