Hannah leaned into her son and whispered, “He fought with his wife last night.” She had adjusted her sunglasses so they sat atop her hair. She flicked her eyes sideways and touched the side of her nose. Chaplin looked where she wanted him to: there was a cot behind the counter, with a blanket thrown across it. “If she made him sleep here all the time—”

“Mum, shh.”

“—he would have made the bed, don’t you think? Plus,” she whispered, “the toothbrush?”

Then Taylor returned with the second cone. “Thank you,” Chaplin said, handing him a dime.

“Thank you,” Hannah said. As they left, she was regarding Taylor with a smile that likely mystified him. She put her sunglasses in place when they reached the street corner. “I’ve changed my mind. I like sunglasses.”

“There’s a bench by the trolley tracks.” There was a pepper tree behind the bench, giving them shade. Hannah took licks of her ice-cream cone, dabbing at the creases of her mouth every few moments. He could feel her full engagement with the ice cream. Part of her mind had eased away, the part that judged and processed information, and she was left relaxed, just the animal in her that recognized when something was sweet. “Mum?” He checked his watch.

“Charlie?”

“Did I tell you that I used to describe things for you, but silently?”

“Whatever does that mean?”

“When you were away, and I was alone, when things would happen, I would tell you about them.”

“When?”

“I don’t know when it started. But I only noticed myself doing it when I was onstage and I was fourteen or fifteen. I don’t remember the show, but I remember, as I was acting in it, I was also narrating it. Not aloud, just… It was as if I was telling myself about what was happening to me but I was also telling you. Because I knew that when you were safe you would want to hear.”

She cocked her head at the word. “Safe?”

He nodded. He wanted some sign she understood, but she was looking forward, and then glancing down at her cone, and then looking at her hand through the glasses as if worried she could see her own bones.

“I used to think that when you were finally safe I could tell you about all that I’d done. But I don’t do that anymore. Do you think that’s pathetic?”

She considered this. “I don’t know.”