One thing was certain, even standing still on this path led the little family of three in the opposite direction of the girls’ deadbeat father.

One by one, they pushed ahead to get a swipe at Ruth, her only ally the narrow confines of the bus aisle.

We’ve got to get her out of that goddamned art school. Besides, that money could be put to much better use. I want to redecorate.

You know there are no Jews working for me. Not one. I won’t hire them.' He sounded proud of the ugly fact.

Pratik lit a candle and performed a little ceremony for the solemn occasion of the moment, placing a flower before Ruth’s ‘yoni.’ He bowed down and mumbled a serious sounding prayer in Bengali.

Did his crime give others some kind of implicit permission to behave the same way, reverberating on and on into the future?

He took a mental picture of this moment’s happy scene to carry with him into the darkness of that dreadful place where he had been chosen as a special pet of the priest.

She hoped her words rang true about her lost daughter Sarai as well, whom she hadn’t seen in over eighteen years, though she still thought about her every day and still prayed for a kind word from her. Or even a cranky one.

He recognized the same frenzy of wild abandon that each of those adults shared while beating their children, as if the important object lesson being taught justified their outsized zeal.