Little ran her finger over the cover, outlining the symbol embossed on the front page, remembering the image flashing by on her television a few months before in San Francisco. She stood stock still, eyes wide open and glazed. Slowly, almost like a convulsion, she pushed past that memory, and found herself in a much earlier moment, years before. She was much younger, opening a drawer and finding a letter. The outside of the letter was imprinted with a symbol that she couldn’t place, though now she knew: a perched eagle holding bound sticks with an axe among them. She had pulled it out of her father’s drawer and held it up to him. She had not recognized the look on his face.
“What is this, papà?” she had said, reaching for it as he swiftly took the envelope from her hands.
“Darling, yes,
