And then there was a day when my daughter wandered from the house when no one was looking. We were always looking, but for one brief moment we each thought the other was looking, and so no one was looking and out of the house stepped our child. We searched the house over and again, then the street and the next street. Neighbors we did not know searched their yards. Meg talked to the police while I drove around. Then I thought of our trail, her talk of lions and bears, her big feet one at a time raising dust, and I went there. It was just dusk of a day that had been far too sunny, far too warm for the season. I hiked up the mountain, keeping in mind at every bend that if she had gone this way, there was no reason to believe that she would have remained on the path, and so I looked for signs, for footprints that the hard, dry surface would yield only grudgingly. Up the mountain looking for large scat that I hoped to not find, scanning the far ridges for the flash of a white tail tip, listening for rustling or perhaps even singing, as it was our habit to sing in these woods that supported bears and cats. I worried that my daughter might be running through these woods and so appeal to a cat’s instinct to chase. I imagined that she might be experiencing her first period and so lighting up the air with a pheromone enticement to a wayward bear. I distracted myself by remembering that bear in French was ours and imagined that the bear might then be ours. I paused every several hurried steps to listen, to stare ahead at the trail and to the sides for anything broken, for any transfer of soil onto plant matter on the ground. Then I heard a whistle, or at least an attempt at a whistle. I listened hard. Again. I slid down off the trail toward the sound and there she was, sitting on part of a downed tree. I worried that there might be a snake that she had not seen, and then I felt stupid and neglectful for not having worried about her encountering snakes during my climb.

“Sarah?”

She turned and stared at me. She did not know who I was in that moment. I died some. I died quite a bit. I sat beside her, looked around for danger.

“This is a nice spot,” I said.

She said nothing. She was not having a seizure, but she said nothing. She played with the cuticles of her thumbs.

“Let’s go home.” I reached over and took her hand, and I saw a flash of recognition in her face. I looked at my mobile phone and saw that I had no signal. We walked together. We sang. Lydia, oh Lydia …

Here comes an old soldier from Botany Bay

a pocketknife