In the kitchen, Cheryl put Bunny in his high chair with a rice cake and took out the trash. She emptied the coffee filter and wiped down the machine and put the butter and the milk and the big carton of juice back in the fridge and ran the dishes under warm water and placed them in the dishwasher. She wiped Bunny’s face and hands and lifted him up out of his highchair and tickled his belly and kissed his soft corn-coloured hair and tipped him upside-down till he chortled and squealed with pleasure and told him he was her Big Boy and then she took him onto the couch where they snuggled up to watch a little early morning television and then she took him upstairs for his morning nap. It always amazed her, how he could be so sleepy so soon after he woke up. None of her own children had ever been like that. Today it was barely nine thirty and Bunny was already sucking his thumb and drifting off.

She settled him in his crib, stood over him, singing and murmuring to him until his eyes closed and his wet thumb had fallen out of his mouth. She told herself not to think about yesterday and Mrs. Clay saying she couldn’t keep him for the night. Softly, she closed his door and came back downstairs and went into the basement and put on a load of laundry and came back up into the kitchen and ironed the bed linen that was waiting from yesterday and then she went back upstairs and made Nancy’s and Beecham’s bed and checked on Bunny and stood looking at him a while and then she came back down again and went into the den to tidy up and it was on the TV.

It was there the moment she went into the den, the silent puff-and-fall of the buildings. First one, then the other.

And after that, everything a strange kind of dream —

Mr. Clay’s brother Robert coming from Rhode Island and staying in the guest bedroom and going into the city every day and coming back in the evenings, grey dust in his hair and in his eyelashes. Mr. Clay’s brother Robert going back to Rhode Island. Mrs. Clay’s sister Barbara and her husband arriving from Madison, Wisconsin, Mrs. Clay’s sister hugging Cheryl, the two of them crying in each other’s arms.

All the packing. Mrs. Clay’s sister saying the journey back would take them sixteen hours.

Cheryl thinking that ‘them’ meant her too. Their big blue car, leaving. His golden head.

Cheryl standing in front of the Clays’ locked house, then walking slowly along the curving tree-lined avenue down to the Post Road and turning right towards the harbour. The masts of the boats tinkling softly against each other, the harbour water dark and still.