She is not your child.
She draws another card. She passes me and smiles.
I smile back. I spot an old-looking doll on the shelf. She has a porcelain face with chipped paint around one cheek. The rest of her is soft so she is propped up between books.
“Who is that?” I ask. “On the shelf.”
I point to the doll. Alice looks up at her. The smile on her face changes to something mischievous.
“That’s Dolly,” she says.
“Is she yours?” I ask. “She looks very old. Did she belong to your mother?”
This causes her mood to shift darker. The smile leaves and she changes the subject to me.
“How many children do you have?” she asks.
“Three.” The answer will always bethree.
“How old are they?” she asks.
“Twenty-one and sixteen.”
She looks at me now and I can see that she is smart. Or perhaps clever.
“You said you had three children,” she says.
I consider my answer carefully. I do not want to disclose anything to this girl, but I don’t want to lie and get caught in it. I need her to trust me.
I take a leap.
“One of my children died. When she was a little girl.”
Alice stares at me. “How did she die?” she asks.
“She was hit by a car. She ran into the street.”
I say the words but don’t allow myself to hear them. I have to move out of this conversation quickly before she breaks me.
But then she is in my lap, climbing right over the Candyland board, arms squeezing me tight. She begins to cry.
“That is so sad,” she says. But her tears, her arms around me, they do not seem real. They do not pull me in. I do not feel like crying, not even with this memory being dragged out before me. My dead child. Lying dead in the street.
Instead, I am stiff as a board. I cannot even close my arms around this child, this new child, who clings to my body.
“I’m okay,” I lie. “It’s really okay. It was a long time ago.”
Alice heaves in and out. The tears stop and she turns her body so her back is nestled against my chest. She takes my forearm and pulls it across her. She strokes my skin like she’s petting me.
“I’m nine too,” she says. “That’s why we picked you up.”
What?I think I must have heard her wrong. So I ask—
“What do you mean?”
She turns her head to gaze up at me. Wide eyes. Angelic. Haunting.
“We were waiting for you. We had to wait a long time.”
