flip-flops (6)

But she didn’t scream. She just looked at her sister with hollow eyes and said nothing. On a Saturday, exactly two years and one week after, Nina walked to the edge of the porch.

It was early, the kind of quiet morning that doesn’t ask questions. The flip-flops were still there, half-shadowed by the overhang. She picked them up. The rubber was stiff from sun, the straps loose.

She turned them over in her hands like evidence. These were the shoes of a boy who ran down docks, who dared the heat of blacktop, who never walked anywhere he could sprint.