Compton pulled out her phone in time to capture a picture of Vani, eyes closed, face aglow against the backdrop of storm clouds. She looked impossibly beautiful, holy even, her black hair whipping in the wind, her pink lips parted just enough to reveal the iridescent edge of her two front teeth. An unpleasant shard of envy lodged itself somewhere in Compton’s chest, despite the fact that Vani’d had the worst luck of anyone she’d ever known when it came to men. If a scoundrel or jackass or con man existed within a five-hundred-mile radius of Vani, she’d drift toward him with the helplessness of a hooked fish. Yet somehow she’d retained her rosy affect and—most unfairly—her rosy, lustrous skin. Compton had one doting, adoring man in her life, and yet she felt her face shriveling and wrinkling as if it were a sped-up documentary clip of fruit decaying.

A few feet away, a family of five stood taking a similar photo. Like her own family, this one consisted of a mother and a father, two sons, and a daughter, although these children seemed a bit older. The youngest of them, a boy of perhaps three, broke from the group, chugging away from his mother’s side with a mischievous snort. She pretended to race after him, waving her arms in an exaggerated arc above her head as if she couldn’t keep up. The other brother, delighted, began flailing around, and the father, catching on, left his place to chase him. Hannah joined Compton in watching the family’s antics, her round face dimpling in delight.

“How sweet!”

Compton swung her attention from the family to Hannah, searching for any sign of pain. She found something unexpected: Hannah’s expression changed from the sappiness she always displayed when gazing at a child to confusion to something a lot like horror. Compton followed her gaze.

Only the little girl stood rooted to the family’s photo spot. Probably she was upset no one was chasing her. Compton’s gaze had already started to drift when something unnatural in the child’s stillness hooked her eye. In a flash, she understood.

The child was struggling to breathe.

Both Compton and Hannah bounded to the little girl’s side, Compton silently and Hannah with an inarticulate cry. Georgia arrived a beat or two after them, skidding to a stop. Compton reached out first, catching the little girl as she crumpled. Her face had gone dusky but she didn’t make a sound. She was so silent, in fact, Compton first assumed she’d suffered an airway obstruction; perhaps she’d been eating something and had swallowed wrong, lodging a foreign object in her trachea. On autopilot, Compton performed a finger sweep and then the Heimlich, but the child was in fact moving air. Compton tilted the child’s head: an examination of her mouth and throat revealed no swelling.