“Oh please,” Helen said. “You won’t even tell him not to hit people. You reward him when he pinches you. You’ve been giving him chocolate chips on the sly, not that it’s any of my business.”

“Childless people always think that the secret to parenting is to leave your children alone,” Karen said to the partition.

“It’s worth trying,” Helen said. “He loves it when I do it.”

“You’re dreaming,” Karen said.

Perley had a name for Helen: Mean Aunt. It was true what she said. She mostly ignored Perley and he loved it. He followed her around all day. When she’d go into the woods to collect wild foods, he’d hurry along with his rolling baby walk, trying desperately to keep up. But she’d disappear up the goat path to the ridge. Perley was soon swallowed by sedges and sassafras saplings, unable to see his way back to camp. Karen trailed behind, hoping he’d turn to her. Instead, Perley waited for Helen, making a game of hitting a tree with a stick to pass the time. If Karen approached him with a tool she’d carved so that the two of them could practice what she called a skill-based activity, Perley would wave his stick at her until she left him alone. When Helen came back down the goat path, her bucket full of whatever she’d harvested, she never greeted Perley, but he would screech with joy, abandon his game, and follow her back to camp. When I first heard Perley call Helen Mean Aunt, I felt a lurch of hope on Karen’s behalf. But no. He said it as if he and Helen had an understanding, an inside joke. It was a title of pure affection.

“Mean Aunt,” he’d say, hugging her around the ankles as she processed acorns, his eyes tenderly closed.

“Let go of me,” she’d say. “I’m busy. Go hug your mom.”

“Come over here,” Karen would say. “Come to me, Perley.” But he wouldn’t.

It’s what Karen had wished for. Because it wasn’t that Perley didn’t like Karen. It was worse than that. Perley loved her. Perley knew that she would always be there, and so she wasn’t there, except as part of the patient landscape. Oh, I could see it caused her pain.