In an instant, or so it seemed to me, she was opening the front door with her coat on and her basket in her hand. I didn’t want her to go at all. But the door closed on her, and then it was just me and Philip, sitting opposite each other or nearly, and my heart was skipping about in trepidation.

“Mrs. Acton, please accept my condolences for your baby girl. Ma told me what happened, of course. I wasn’t born when my parents had Gerard, but I know they suffered, and I’m sorry you did too.”

I had not expected such a properly expressed, dignified speech of sympathy from this gangling, untidy young man, and it moved me.

“That’s very kind of you, Philip.” I tried to gather my thoughts. “Now, the problem with the drawing is that we—my husband and I . . .”

I clutched my hands together on the tabletop. I wished Bridie was here.

“You and your husband . . . ,” he prompted.

“We each held her, him first and then me. But she was swathed in a towel.” I liked using the word swathed, which I had recently learned. The poetry of it gave me a sense of control over the situation. “I thought my husband might have remembered something since, caught some glimpses before I held her, but he hadn’t. So neither of us really saw her. We couldn’t even really make out her face. So I don’t know how you can go about making a drawing of her.”

He nodded to himself and said nothing. Which was good.

“I’m sorry too,” I added, “that you had a brother you never knew.”

“Not many people say that. Thank you.” He picked up a pencil that was lying on the table, twirled it in his fingers. “What was her name, your daughter?”

“Catherine. She’s the saint of the city of Alexandria, where I come from.”

He clipped another piece of paper to his board. His fingers were very long, the knuckles big. I had a feeling when he stood up that he would be tall.

“Catrine,” he echoed uncertainly. It was obvious he didn’t speak French.

“Cath-rin.” I pronounced it the English way this time. “I imagine she might look like me. Although more babyish, of course, and with a snub nose.”

Snub, another word recently acquired.

Eyes lowered, Philip was making tiny scuffing strokes with his pencil. “Tell me more, if you can, Mrs. Acton.”

“Please call me Yvette.”

“Yvette.”

I told him about my vision of a suspended baby with the radiating hair. His eyes lit up. “That’s more like it,” he exclaimed, and with great alacrity began to make a variety of swirling and slanting strokes on the paper. I sat silently watching. He was rendering my dead child on the page and yet he exuded this joyful, organic energy. It stabbed my heart.

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