Sophie barely got that last part out, because she was crying now. She was sobbing. Some dam inside her had cracked. She was sobbing and she didn’t know if she would ever stop. PJ slid across the seat and took Sophie in his arms. He held her as she cried. His poor daughter. His only living one. He let her cry for a while. “I’m sorry,” he finally

“A baby alpaca is called a cria,” he explained. “And when an alpaca gives birth, it’s called an unpacking.”

“You think they’ll be all right?” Sophie asked. “After everything that’s happened to them?” “I think they will. Kids are resilient.” “They’re not, Dad. Kids aren’t resilient. That’s something adults like to say to make themselves feel better. To pretend that kids don’t feel as deeply as adults do. But kids are everything that happens to them.

But you can’t blame kids for anything they do. They are just kids. It’s their job to test limits, to shoplift and try drugs and drink jungle juice out of trash cans, and most of them still turn out okay in the end.