“Could there have been a worse signal to the evil eye? Baby Alive? And what now? She could not take it home but she could not leave it here. She couldn’t turn it off but she couldn’t bear to see its empty mouth move and move. Maybe the TSA would find it in her suitcase and blow it up. She got to take her darling home all those years ago, and yes, she would dote on the new baby but only because the baby would be a pinhole camera through which to look at her love for her daughter, the near total eclipse, the blinding event. She wanted to buy everything, the jelly jars and the Pez dispensers, the never-played-with board games with the clicking spinners that told you how far to go and the cards that told you what you had to give up.

“‘I’ll take her,” Thea said. “Who else have you got?’”
—Elizabeth McCracken, “A Walk-Through Human Heart”