You would think that such an event, a bolt of lightning shooting out of the sky to strike a little girl in a vacant lot, would call immediate attention from the neighbors. But it did not. Only the dogs pointed their snouts to the sky and howled. Birds were startled into flight from their power line perches, but even they quickly settled back to roosting in the stillness of a late afternoon grown almost dark with pending rain. The sky had become heavy and shadowed, a rare experience during those years of drought when the blue sky imposed itself on
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