I closed my trunk slowly. I did not want her to see me looking at her kid. I pretended to rearrange something in the back. I did not want to be the stranger who stares. But what I saw through the SUV's rear window in the six seconds I pretended to rearrange was this: the woman, still crying, still on the phone, took her free hand off the steering wheel and swung it backward, not looking, and hit the child in the arm. The child did not flinch. The child did not cry. The child did not react. The

way a three-year-old reacts when they have been hit and are surprised, and the way a three-year-old reacts when they have been hit and they know it is coming — these are two different looks. I have a nephew. I know the difference. The boy in the 4Runner had the second look. I stopped pretending to rearrange. I walked to the driver's side of my own SUV. I got in. I closed the door. And I sat in my car with the engine off, for what I later realized was about ninety seconds, trying to figure out what a reasonable person was supposed to do with what I had just seen.