In the dream, the height doesn't scare me at all. My fingers dance across the top of the railing like it's a set of piano keys.

There are no parents, no lawyers. The girl’s father is unreachable, has been unreachable for years.

I’m looking down on the estate from above, and then I’m on the balcony, sitting all the way at the edge, legs pressed through the wooden rails and dangling down, down in the night. Inthe dream, the height doesn’t scare me at all. My fingers dance across the top of the railing like it’s a set of piano keys.

Maybe it was only grief, after all, bubbling to the surface in all its ugly trappings—grief like a gaping wound for a daughter who is gone and likely not coming home again.