The woman who knew which kids on Delcorte weren’t getting fed and made sure a coat came back with a twenty folded in the pocket and a note that said found this in the lining, must be yours. The woman Lottie told me about that afternoon, without meaning to wound me, when she said, “You know she sat with my Harold the whole last week.

In the hospice.

Nights, so I could sleep.” I did not know.

Harold had died four years ago and I had not known my own wife was spending her nights at his bedside.

“She said not to trouble you with it,” Lottie said, and patted my hand, and it was not an accusation, but I felt the size of what I had missed settle over me like a coat two sizes too big — the vast, quiet largeness of the person I had eaten breakfast across from and never fully met.

Chapter 6 — Robin