I turn to consider her again. The eyes, yes. The slenderness yes also, although this person is not thin in the same way as the nine-year-old. Not a child’s face, though, not the daughter’s face at all. Much older, not lined, not older like that, but somehow tired. Not fresh, like the daughter’s face. They cannot be the same person, the daughter was someone else altogether, a child. I have not thought about her for a very long time, and this person has no right.

“No,” I say strongly, my voice supporting me this time, giving me timbre and strength and harshness. “No, you are not my daughter. I remember her, and she is not like you. Go away now.”

She does not move. Her face is rigid, hurt and determined both, and it will not be so easy. I wish that I had kept the hoe; not to hurt her, but because I feel defenceless, naked, standing here against her.

“I’m sure I don’t look the same, of course.” There is a strain, as if she is making her voice reasonable against its will. “I was nine years old. Now I’m eighteen. You can’t expect me not to have changed. You’ve changed too. I didn’t recognize you at all at first.”

Time. She was nine. Now she is eighteen? Nine years? It is possible, I admit. It is certainly possible that it has been nine years — it may have been twenty, or eternity.

So. Granted that it is possible, I still have perhaps a choice about whether or not to recognize her? Her body seems to be leaning toward me, and her face is concentrated on mine, willing me to accept. Her persuasion is silent and powerful, but I have to resist. I want to tell her again to go away, to refuse her. I can see more clearly now the nine-year-old in her. The hair, the hair has deepened, not so much red in it now, and not so soft. Waving, very beautiful, not curling and short as it used to be, so easy to run hands through when walking by the child. I had thought reddish hair would be coarse, but hers had been soft. Now it seems thicker, less delicate.

More flesh, on the body and the face. Her bones used always to be there, a hug was sometimes painful if bodies combined at odd angles. Now there would be no pain, even the bones of her face more covered.

Only the eyes are the same. Very wide, very brown, intent, serious. With that signal behind them, asking not to be hurt, that was there at nine, before anyone had considered hurting her. She was a child who seemed, already, to know many things.

I know her now, and it locks me to her.