The next day, in true Dustin fashion, he forgot he had even made the suggestion. Then several months later, in an ironic twist of fate, Zadie found herself pregnant anyway—a fact that she had still not yet shared with anyone, including Dustin. She should have seen it coming, and not just because she had terrible luck, but because she could literally see things coming.

She was seven years old when she first realized there was something different about her. That day she was “helping” her mom in the yard by detonating the piles of leaves that Nora had spent all morning raking. Through the leaves that tumbled in front of her, she saw Clarence, Finn’s father, smiling at her from atop a ladder that was leaning against the side of the house. He pulled a wet bundle of leaves out of the gutter, held them up for her to see, and made a stink face. Zadie took this as a challenge. She reached into one of her mom’s piles, held up her own bundle of leaves, then tossed them into the air like confetti. Clarence tried tossing his leaves, too, but they clumped together and landed on the driveway with a splat. Zadie giggled.

As Clarence turned his attention back to the task at hand, Zadie was struck by an uneasy sensation. To her seven-year-old brain, it was much like the feeling she experienced when she went too high on the swings and her stomach felt like it was floating. It was soon followed by a single scary thought: Clarence is going to fall like the leaves. Confused and frightened, she turned to her mom, who was in the middle of bagging the leaves she’d collected. Before Zadie could utter a word, she heard a crashing sound behind her. She whipped around and saw Clarence on the ground, clutching his left leg. It looked funny, like her dolls’ legs did after she’d turned them around the wrong way.

Then the screaming started. Zadie had never heard a grown man make a noise like that before. It was the scariest thing she had ever heard. Nora rushed over to him as Zadie fled into the house and up the stairs to her bedroom. She hid under the covers and cried until she heard the wail of the ambulance.

It had taken Zadie several days to work up the courage to tell her mom what had happened to her that day. By that time, Clarence was camped out on the couch and using a wire clothes hanger to scratch under his cast. Zadie made sure the door to the living room was closed before she said, “It’s my fault.”