She reminds herself not to judge. It’s not easy, especially when you have a young child. She crosses the room to the couch, and sits down. She sets her bag next to her and looks at Jeremy. She takes out her knitting, and a few old storybooks that she dug out of the attic when she started babysitting. The boy is still fixated on his blocks, building some complex structure.

“Jeremy? Would you like me to read you a story?”

He looks directly at her for the first time. For a moment, Marianne would swear there is something insolent, something that borders on contempt, in those wide and innocent blue eyes.

Then he looks back down at his toys, and Marianne dismisses the notion with a shake of her head. He’s just a little shy, she decides.

She tries again. “Or would you like to play a game? I’m pretty good at Candy Land.”

This time there is no mistaking it. He’s definitely scowling at her. “Leave me alone.”

Well. That’s not how she raised her kids. Marianne believes in discipline. In her opinion, that’s what so many families today lack.

“Jeremy, that’s not a very polite thing to say.”

He ignores her.

“Jeremy,” she says. “Do I have to take away your toys?”

Jeremy doesn’t answer, but he stops playing. He sighs heavily, as if he cannot believe he has to tolerate her. It’s such a grown-up sound. He looks up with a sly smile.

For a split-second, Marianne believes she’s making progress.

“That’s better. Now. Do you want to tell me what you’re building? Is it a house? Or a car?”

“No. It’s you,” he says, and his face splits into a wide grin. For some reason, Marianne feels a chill run down her back.

She tries to smile, though. “It’s me? Well, it doesn’t look much like me.”

“It’s not you on the outside,” Jeremy says, and she notices, for the first time, how unusually clear his high little voice sounds. He has no speech impediments, no childlike inflection to his voice. He sounds like someone much older speaking through someone much younger. “It’s everything that makes you. Everything you are inside.”

“Oh,” she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say to that.

He holds up the structure of blocks, all held together by magnetic force and precise angles. It’s really very accomplished, whatever it is, some kind of a geometrical shape she could never name.

Savagely, Jeremy snaps off one corner. “See? Those were your memories of your daughter.”