What does Polly really remember? Since the accident, the temperature of the air, the way a mosquito could balance on the peach fuzz on her small arm, a sticky line of dirt in the inner crease of the elbow. Childhood is a green knot, hiding places and suspended time. It is the speed she can run through grass, the heat of the air, the fear of pissing her pants on a school bus, the difficulty of returning someone’s gaze, a bright object in the sand, the way a good moment can slide to bad.

Polly and Jane and Merle moved to Stony Brook from the city the year before. They were poor, with no money for both tuition and a young child. Papa and Dee were old—very old, in their late eighties—and Dee needed help. Jane stayed at NYU, but Merle transferred to SUNY, and Polly was enrolled in the Suffolk County school system. She had a new kingdom. Now, Rita and Edmund Ward were joining them because Edmund’s father, Thomas, Merle’s best friend and roommate in college, was overseas in the war, and because Rita could no longer stay with her in-laws, or they could no longer bear her. She said they were hateful, shriveled people. Leave Edmund with us, they’d told her, and they meant they wanted Rita to go away and die. This was most of what she talked about for the first few days. Jane gave up trying to herd Polly away, but Polly stopped listening on her own accord, and it seemed that Edmund did, too. They slid into companionship, silent at first. Later they were only quiet when an adult was around.