Gone girl

She wandered in on Thursday morning looking very wan, and climbed into her bed. I sat on the edge and stroked her back.

- Steve Braunias

There was a photo of her that I propped up on the bedside table, taken when she was just a few weeks old, lying tucked up in her crib and looking to the right with a poised smile. I looked at the 17-year-old in her bed and then at the baby in her crib, and back again, and again, one facing right and the other, older one facing left, and I couldn't really tell the difference - both were fragile and small, my only child in a chamber of bedsheets.

She said, "Can you bring the three deer to the airport?" She meant the little porcelain figurines on her dressing table. I thought long and hard about this request. I wanted the three deer to stay exactly where they were, at peace in a schoolgirl's bedroom. Why should they have to travel to a distant city and relocate to a university student's bedroom? I had every right to hold on to them. My house, my deer.