He didn’t say anything, just stared intently into the green yarn in his hands, then pushed his palms together, squeezed the green invisible. He shook his hair out of his eyes, and for the first time, Josie could see how he resembled Mary—the same round chin and full lips—and she wanted to take him up in her arms and swear, insist, promise that he had done nothing wrong, that all that pain and violence she had almost shot into him was hers. She would kneel at his feet. She would beg his forgiveness. She would explain how what she had done was unforgivable, but maybe he could understand, maybe he could feel how much she loved him, how she often thought that if they had been six together, they might have been friends. They might have been like him and Katie. But the image of Katie buried in sand, Tyler on his knees commanding she lie still flickered on, and what followed was a too-vivid picture of that horrible day—his tiny body over her knee, his dinosaur underpants around his ankles, her limbs electrified with cruelty. An apology did not take it back, did not take anything back. She had done it, and even now, only a few minutes ago, she had imagined herself tiny and smooth, resting in Devesh’s hand, small enough to be cradled, small enough to be pinched into submission. The image came so naturally, rolled itself into her head and made it throb. She did not want to be this person anymore. She knew who she was now, and no whipping or beating could release her, and if it couldn’t release her, then what was it good for?

“Here,” she said. She pulled the giraffe out of her pocket and held it in her palm.

Tyler glanced up at it, then at his palms, then back at the giraffe.

“It’s yours,” she said.

“The giraffe is the biggest ruminant and the tallest mammal. It lives south of the Sahara.”

“Yes,” she said.

She walked over to him. His head shone, and she wanted to push her fingers through all that blond hair, stroke his cheek, touch the tiny bones at his collar, but she opened his hand, placed the giraffe in the nest of green yarn, and then began to pack.

*   *   *