because the cigarette smoke would be so thick you could barely see across the living room and the house would wreak for days afterward.
        Not long after Celia was hit by the car, Donald initiated a campaign to make the neighborhood safer for children. Perched at the little desk in the entry hall, he would call the neighbors up and down the block and gently encourage them to park their cars in their driveways rather than along the curb in front of their houses because cars parked along the curb blocked drivers’ views of children darting into the street. In Celia’s case, she’d chased a ball into the street from behind a parked car so the on-coming driver had no chance to stop.
        After the phone campaign, Donald began talking to neighbors face to face. On Sunday afternoons, he would knock on doors up and down the block, engaging in conversations about the perils of parking cars along the curb and how his daughter had almost been killed because of this practice, not that he blamed Chase Johnston or his wife for parking their car out there that day since they didn’t know how dangerous it was at the time.
        At first, excited by the official nature of this activity, Conner would tag along, hopping up the steps at each house ahead of his father and ring the doorbell, then stand back and watch the adults talk. But he got bored with the slow and repetitive pace and eventually stopped tagging along, even when his father asked him to.
        The project gathered momentum. Donald traveled the entire length of Hamlin Street in both directions, then up and down Gilmore Street, spreading his children’s safety message in an ever-widening circumference.
        Then he formed the children’s safety committee. Meetings were held to discuss cars parking along the curbs and whether there should be speed limit signs and speed bumps and streetlights. He held meetings all over the neighborhood, and since he was already gone due to work almost every night, it got so Conner saw his father even less than before, only when he was coming or going.

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        Conner was a very active and energetic child, filled with nervous energy and always on the move. Aside from the underground forts he’d build behind the garage, he’d frequently wander down the street to Jackie Oren’s house half-way down the block, or Billy Sweeney’s, across the street from Jackie’s. They would duck behind shrubs and fire toy pistols at one another or become involved for days with elaborate deliberations to bury a dead turtle in a shallow grave in the Oren backyard or discuss how the colorful magnolia buds on the trees along the street, when their skin was peeled away, were reminiscent of a woman taking off her clothes.
        One Sunday afternoon,