For one long second, nobody moved.
Not the father.
Not the mother.
Not even the little girl.
Because that blue string on her wrist had been braided by his youngest son the week before the fire. He made one for himself and one for his brother and called them “adventure bands.” The father had laughed when he saw them. The mother had taken a picture. And now one of them was tied around the wrist of a barefoot orphan standing in a graveyard.
