“The difference—es,” I say in a low, close voice that I hope stresses my own seriousness, since I am very much so. Seeing this man on the beach—fighting a tangle of memories—is exactly why I haven’t been here for twenty years. Well, one of the reasons. The rest are up at the house. I came down here first, actually stopped at the square first to superimpose good thoughts on bad. And look what happened. I agreed to this trip because my daughter wanted it, but she needs to be a little sensitive to my needs. “The differences,” I say, “are that we came here to spend time together on the beach and to spend time with your grandfather and your aunt, and we’re only here for a week, and he isn’t a shelter.”

“What kind of work?” comes Jack’s low voice.

“Thanks, but she’s not interested,” I say without looking his way. My eyes are on Joy, trying to drill in all that I can’t say.

But the ocean must be drowning it out—either that, or stubbornness has turned her momentarily deaf, because my daughter doesn’t hear a word I’m not saying. “I am interested,” she insists and, breaking eye contact with me, tells Jack, “I’ll do anything you need done? I can play with animals or feed them or change their water or scoop their poop—and I don’t want pay, this is totally volunteer.”

“Joy—”

“Volunteer, Mom,” she assures me, “so it can be two hours a day for the next five days. I mean, you’ll be busy cleaning Papa’s house, trust me, there are piles of things everywhere and someone has to go through them, and just now? When I tried to move one book, one book off the sofa so he could sit, he told me not to touch anything and went to the only uncluttered chair in the place. So there’s lots of sorting out to do, which takes someone who knows what’s good and what isn’t and who can deal with Papa—and can I really do that?”

“No,” I hiss. I can’t believe that she’s raised all of this in front of Jack, toward whom I hitch my head. “But he doesn’t need an intern.”

“I do,” Jack asserts.

“No,” I tell him and tighten my fingers on Joy’s arm like I had when she was four and kicking and screaming at the pond in Central Park because she didn’t want to leave. I remember being mortified because other children were well-behaved, remember being horrified having to drag her because she was too big for me to bodily lift, remember being terrified that the police would cite me for child abuse, remember realizing that I’d brought this on myself by being too permissive. It was a pivotal moment in my life as a parent.