Susan Beth Pfeffer

. . . when I came back, I found Mom sobbing at the kitchen table. . . Then I asked her what had happened. 'Nothing,'she said. 'I was thinking about that man. . . I started thinking about. . . if he and his wife and their other child are okay, and I don't know. It just got to me. ' 'I know,' I said, because I did know. Sometimes it's safer to cry about people you don't know than to think about people you really love.