By Suzanne LaFleur
A car crash kills her father and her little sister; then her mother leaves too, and eleven-year-old Aubrey has to learn how to let people back in.
Aubrey is eleven and living alone. There's cheese and crackers in the kitchen, a goldfish named Sammy, and one thing she is working hard to hide: no one knows she has no one. A car accident on a rainy road killed her dad and her little sister Savannah. Her mother, who was driving and can't carry the guilt of it, got in the car one day and drove off, and didn't come back. So Aubrey keeps the house running and tells nobody, until her grandmother turns up and takes her home to Vermont. There she starts at a new school, makes a friend, and writes letters — to Savannah's imaginary friend, to her mother, to no one in particular — because some things come out easier on paper than out loud. It's a quiet, inside-her-head book about a girl who has to be brave far too young, and about how slowly the healing really comes.
This is where the trail moves from losing a friend to losing your family, which is a much bigger thing to hand a child, and it's why it sits above the friend stories. The grief here is doubled: a father and a sister gone, and then a mother who can't stay, so it brushes right up against the scary idea of a parent falling apart. But LaFleur tells it gently. Aubrey heals at a believable pace, one small step at a time, and the book keeps its warmth the whole way. There's real hope waiting for a child who feels things hard and is ready to feel a little more.