The little girl in a white dress, playing and laughing behind the Stevensons’ house with a stuffed dinosaur and the robot toy.

Two older boys approaching. Teasing the little girl about her dad. “He’s a drunk.”

The girl, defiant at first. “No, he’s not.”

The boys continue taunting, malice in their eyes. “Saw him. Wrecked the company car. He’s a useless drunk.”

The girl, sobbing. “No, he’s not!”

“Didn’t you hear? Old Man Taggert fired him. You’re going to starve. He won’t work in this town again.”

“No!” The little girl dropping the robot, running out of the yard, clutching her dinosaur. Entering the field at the edge of the property.

The boys laughing, staying behind.

Madeline ran on. The blond grass whipped and stung her bare legs below her shorts.

In a place where the grass was smashed flat, she spotted something brown. She raced to the spot and looked down. The brown, furry face of a brontosaurus smiled up at her. Bending over, she picked up the toy. Emotions swept over her. Images.

The little girl in the white dress sobbing uncontrollably in the grass, chest heaving, thinking about her dad, of the stink of alcohol on his breath.

Memories of a time the girl had spied on him from the stairs as he pulled a bottle of vodka out from behind the worn couch cushions and took a long, deep drink.

The girl kneeling in the grass for a long time, sobbing until her chest shuddered when she inhaled.

Then dropping the dinosaur and running on, toward her secret place, a lightning-scarred hollow tree beyond the old dam.

The girl had left for it just a few moments before.

Clutching the brontosaurus tight under her arm, Madeline raced forward. Ahead lay the edge of the woods. Beyond that burbled the rushing white water of the North Cascade River and the old cement dam, abandoned in the 1940s.