I heard Miranda sigh. In that sound was a world. I thought of her long workdays and the evenings alone with her energetic five-year-old. I realized then that I had never seen her with a man. When I turned to look at her, Miranda met my eyes for a couple of seconds, pressed her lips together, and looked down at the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to make of it. For a second I saw the ferocious drawing again.

“Are you walking home?” I asked her.

She looked up, apparently recovered from the small spasm I had just witnessed. “Yes, we were at the park and then picked up some groceries.” She lifted the bag in her hand.

Just minutes later, we found the photographs. There were four lying on the house steps when we returned. At first I mistook them for the flyers or menus that appear regularly outside Brooklyn houses. Prepared to discard them, I bent over and saw four Polaroids of Miranda and Eggy in the park. Miranda was tying Eggy’s shoe near the swings at the playground. Across Miranda’s bent torso someone had drawn a black circle with a line through it. I muttered some low exclamation and picked up another picture, which must have been taken only minutes later. Miranda was pushing Eggy on a swing, and this time the crossed-out circle was drawn across the mother’s face. The two others were similar recordings of the innocent outing, each one marked by the peculiar sign on another part of Miranda’s body. My first impulse was to hide the pictures from both of them. What good this would have done, I have no idea. I felt a desire to protect them from whoever the photographer might be, but it was too late. Miranda was beside me, looking down at the pictures, and Eggy was jumping up and down asking to see what we were looking at.

“Just throw them away,” Miranda said in a low voice.

“Do you know who took these?” I asked.

She looked me straight in the eyes, her mouth tight. “Put them in the garbage.”

“I’ll throw them away inside,” I said. “Miranda, have you found any other pictures—or things?”

“What are they? Let me see! Let me see!” Eggy said.

“They’re nothing,” Miranda replied. She gave me a warning look, and I understood that I had stupidly launched into a subject not to be discussed in front of Eggy.

The four photos were in my right hand. I closed my fist and crumpled them on the spot. Before we parted, I said again that if they needed anything, they should let me know. I gave her my hand, and when she took it, her fingers felt ice cold against my skin.