She drove through Stamford and kept going, and by the time she came off in Norwalk I had stopped constructing explanations, because there is no explanation for a route.

She went south and east, away from anything, into the part of Norwalk that is marine supply and self-storage and small industrial units — the flat area behind the water where there are no houses and no restaurants and nothing whatsoever that anyone would drive a seven-year-old to.

And she pulled in behind a single-story brick building with three roll-up bays and one steel personnel door and a sign for a company that had gone out of business.

I went past it.