“Are you originally from India? Do you mind me asking so?” Gertrude did her best to restrain herself. She had a way of pouncing on others to make friends, of trying far too hard. She was the woman others looked past. “A little too plain,” her mother used to say. Gertrude had made some friends in London, had someone to sit with at lunch at Collins School for Girls, English girls of pedigree, with family trees of means, but had never felt particularly close with any of them. They made fun of her accent, how she couldn’t make the th sound, pinched their noses at the vinegary smell of her sauerkraut.

“I don’t mind at all,” Deepa said. “I’m from New Delhi, though I’ve been in London for more than seven years now. I quite like it, except for the dreariness. The weather, I mean, not the city itself.” She looked out again over the steps. Something caught her eye. Her face brightened. She raised her hand up, waved. “Oh, thank God. There he is.”

Gertrude followed her gaze. A little boy held the hand of an older woman with bouffant hair. The boy broke away, charged up the steps.

So the boy belonged to Deepa. Gertrude had seen no sign of him in the building, no bike parked in the foyer, no ball in the hallway. He never got on or off the bus with his mother.

Deepa extended her arms. He rushed into them. She lifted him, sidled her face next to his. “Oh, my sweet boy. I was so worried. I couldn’t find you.”

“I was playing at the park, Ma. I made a friend.”

His voice was high-pitched, gravelly in that out-of-breath, little-boy way. He was a wisp of a thing but had strong, bright eyes, a tiny little pug nose, thick hair with a curled cowlick on one side of his forehead. He was handsome, like his mother. Gertrude guessed he was a few years younger than Gerald would have been, had Gerald lived. She wondered if the boys might have been friends had they grown up in the same building together.

The older woman eyed them from the bottom step, set her hands on her waist, as if her time with the child had been some sort of a punishment.

“Vijay, this is my new friend, Miss…”

“He can call me Miss Trudy. Enzenebner, my last name, is a mouthful.”

His eyes darted to Gertrude. He offered her a slight smile. “Hi,” he said.

Gertrude stepped a little closer, touched his elbow. “How old are you, dear?”

“Six years and four months. How old are you?”

“Vijay,” Deepa gasped. She shifted him to the other hip. “Mind your manners.”

“Oh, I don’t mind sharing it. I’m twenty-two and, let’s see,” Gertrude counted out her fingers, “six, seven, eight months.”

“Ma says adults count age only in years, not months.”