She is patient in a way I am not.

She does the thing with the hair that I cannot do.

She has never once been late and she has never once tried to keep her longer and she has never said one word to that child about any of it.

And when she brings her back she stands on my porch and does not come in, because she will not come into my house, and we have a conversation about a nap and a snack that lasts about ninety seconds, and then she gets in a car.

She has not been inside my house since the twenty-second of October 2022.