We met in the park along the two-lane highway to town. Years of driving the truck or riding my bicycle along this road, I’d seen that park a million times. But I’d never seen anyone there. I’d never once brought Perley there to swing on the swings or to brave the tall slide. Now I knew why. I knew why the swings sat empty and the slide was covered in pine needles. It was the visitation park. People knew to stay clear of it. Somehow, I’d known, too. Parents played with their children here as a performance, while some social worker sat on a bench nearby, watching. Maybe people stayed away to give undone families some privacy. But more likely people knew the truth. Trouble is catching. If you played with your children at this park, an ordinary day might suddenly become a visitation day. You’d find yourself alone at the end of it, your kids waving to you from the back of the social worker’s car. Pariah Park. Fear Park.

But fuck that. Who cares about the park? Who cares about it when Perley was in it? He stepped out of the caseworker’s Camry and came toward me like he was still a baby, pigeon-toed and tumbling. He cut through the frost-covered grass of Pariah Park, and I thought, Let’s just live here. You’re here, I’m here, what else do we need?

But all I said was, “Perley.”

Perley said, “Mama L.” But when he was four feet away from me he stopped. He just stopped, like I was behind a pane of glass. He stopped and looked at me. And I saw he’d changed. It had only been two weeks, but he was different. Something in his eyes. I’ll know you anywhere, my boy, I’ll know you by your toes, by your pinkie fingers. I’ll know you. I wanted him to come closer, but I didn’t know how to make that happen. So I sat down in the grass. There was a thaw that day. The temperature was climbing toward fifty, but the ground was hard and cold. I killed ice crystals sitting on them. Perley pushed back his hood. He gazed at me without smiling. His breath made hard quick clouds.

I said, “I love to see your face every day. Are you all right? Are you hungry? Are they taking care of you? Will you come home soon?”

The caseworker, that child-woman I refused to recognize, came up behind him, swinging car keys. “That’s an inappropriate question, Lily,” she said. “And it’s a lot of pressure on Perley. If I were you, I’d use visitation time to play together, not to ask him when he’s coming home. Let me assure you, the home he’s in is a perfectly good one.”