It went on for about three weeks before I did anything about it. My eight year old kept coming back through the door with ice cream she had no money to buy. The first time it was a strawberry shortcake bar, and when I asked she just said the man gave it to her. I assumed he had a spare. Then it happened again, and by the third time I asked why, and she shrugged and said he told her strawberry was my favorite too. Those bars genuinely were my favorite as a kid. She had never told him my name, and never told him what I used to eat. So the next evening, when the music came down our street, I walked out with her.

He was in his mid sixties, gray hair under a baseball cap, glasses. He said hey kiddo to Nora without looking up, and then he saw me and went still, the way people do when a face almost matches something. He asked if I was her mother, nodded a few times, and then said Delia, which I had never given him. When I asked whether I knew him he laughed a little and said probably not anymore.