The guards trailing a respectable distance behind us at all times are a bit of a dark cloud on the otherwise beautiful day, but hey, nothing can be completely perfect, right?
“Mama!” Dante has pulled his hands away from his eyes and is blinking at the brightness. “You’re supposed to go hide!”
“Fine, but sixty-seven is kind of a big number. What if we do fifteen?”
He shakes his head, his hair flopping over his forehead. “I can count high now. Today, I counted to sixty-seven. Mrs. Steinman said it was a big im-poo-ver-ment.” He sounds the word out slowly and shakes his head. “What’s that word?”
He beams. “Yeah, it’s a big improvement. So I’ll count and you hide, okay?”
Two weeks ago, he couldn’t count past fifteen. His teacher kept sending me passive-aggressive emails to work with him a
