I buried my eight-year-old daughter. Eight years later a new student walked into my classroom with her face, and when I finally called that girl’s parents in for a meeting, the door opened and my own husband was standing in it.

Those are the two facts I have. They do not fit together and they are never going to.

What I do now is ask people the question. Directly, in the plain form, at least once a year, to about four people I love.

Most of the time they say no and mean it.

It costs eleven seconds. I know exactly how long eleven seconds is now, because I sat on a classroom floor once and counted them without knowing what I was counting.