“I’m gonna help,” she called.

He thought that Jimmy might come then but Jimmy only stood there watching as they walked toward the sheds, their bodies dipping into the shadows, Ray feeling Jimmy’s eyes on him even when he knew neither he nor Helen could be seen after they had rounded the corner of the sheds, the railroad tracks stretching off into the sunlight and not a soul in sight.

He pulled her to him then and their lips met, blooming darkly with blood and youth and fear. He could feel her tongue, could taste it on his own, slippery in the warm darkness of her mouth.

And then the voice of a child very close so that the two leapt apart as if from electric shock: “Ooh! Kissy kissy!”

The older of the Takahashi sisters stood just outside the shade, pointing and laughing. “Kissy kissy!” she said again.

“Mary!” Ray shouted. “You shut your mouth.”

“Kissy kissy!”

He reached her before she could escape, his hand dragging her forward, his flat palm striking her face with a loud slap that elicited, from Helen, just behind him now, an audible gasp. “You shut your mouth, Mary!” he hissed.

“You hurt me!” the child squealed.

“I’ll hurt you more if you tell anyone. You hear me?” She did not respond and he pulled hard on her arm again. “Do you?”

She nodded now, her tears flying fast down her cheeks.

“Where’s your sister?”

“Let go of me!”

“Where’s Doris?”

“At the bus,” the little girl mumbled sullenly, still crying faintly so that her voice was high and twisted by her grief. “They sent me to find you, dumb head.”

He stood for a moment, holding her there, frozen, the girl’s face drooping toward the dirt and weeds. Then he said simply, “Go on then,” and let her go.

“Ray,” Helen said, her voice breathless. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“What if she tells someone what she saw?”

“She won’t. She wouldn’t.”

“She would. Those two are the biggest bunch of tattletales ever made.”

They stood looking at each other then. “We should go back,” he said.

That was all. Not, as it would turn out, their final meeting but the last time she would look at him as an object of her love, the end point of a long shining rope that, for a time, tied them together heart to heart. This image of them was hers, to hold her during whatever weeks and months were to come.