I asked her whether anyone knew she had come down here alone.

“My mother’s at the grocery store,” Lily said.

She said it as a plain fact, without any feeling, her eyes on the rusty playground equipment across the sand.

“She usually takes forty-five minutes on Saturdays.”

I sat back down on the cold iron, leaving a wide gap of wooden slats between us.

I told her I had been surprised to get her note at the school bus.

“I found letters from your husband,” Lily said.