Those summers were when David felt most fully himself, trotting alongside Priscilla down the rocky streets, climbing at midnight up the slender path beside the stream to a large flat stone that they considered their own, reclining there shoulder to shoulder, talking without thinking as stars fell overhead.

NEWYORKER: Or Else

She and her husband let David go because they had no better options for his summers and expected the worst of him: delinquency, slovenliness, eventual arrest.

NEWYORKER: Or Else