I feel she may be hurt, but will go away and get over it. Get on with things, which shows how little I remember. That she begins to cry again, leaves me at a loss. I turn back to the garden, and I suppose I really am avoiding her, because I find myself touching the green bean plants quite unnecessarily, to see how they are coming along. By the time I look at her again, the tears are drying on her face, she hasn’t wiped them away, but she seems more composed.

“It won’t be that easy, you know,” she says. She is calm now, very level, decided. “You can’t get out of it that way. As if you had nothing to do with it, as if it was all to do with me.” She tosses a trailing piece of that lovely red-brown hair away from her face.

“I’ll let you think about it for a while. I’m going back to town now, I’ll check into that hotel you mentioned, and I’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll leave you alone, you won’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to.” She is very pale, determined and child-like. “But I’m going to be here. I’m going to keep on reminding you that I’m your daughter, and that you don’t get away from everything that easily. I’ll keep coming back here, every day, until you want to talk to me.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mother.”

She comes closer to me now, stands quite near, looks into my eyes. I look back at her steadily, not challenging her, I think, and not encouraging her. Gently she puts her hands on my shoulders and bends a little. She kisses my cheek. Her lips feel like a flower brushed on my face.

I must confess, although I never will to her: as she goes I follow her, tracking behind, along the string of trees that line the lane, moving silently behind them, keeping glimpses of her between them, watching her look back toward the cabin until she cannot see it around a curve, and then slowing, confident she is out of sight, becoming sad again. I see her wipe a hand across her face. She seems pathetic, and I am angry; but this time I must be angry with myself as well, for it isn’t she who has shown me this; I have made an effort to see it myself.

It is not that she is my daughter. I would be resentful of anything that tried to trap me.

But why, with her, am I letting it happen?