I buried my daughter that week. Marguerite was gone by the afternoon and the doctors had done everything, and I was walking past the café she loved because I did not know where else to put myself. That was where I saw the pregnant young woman and the boy of about seven. She asked me to buy him the cheapest thing they had and said she wanted no money, only that he had not eaten since the day before. I ordered him soup and grilled cheese and milk, and got her a hot meal and two sandwiches for later, and she cried and held my hand and said nobody had ever been kind to them. I told her to wait while I ran to the shop for a few things, and when I came back they had gone.

At four the next morning something woke me and my whole yard was full of cribs and bassinets, from the porch out to the pavement, and nobody was there. In the first one sat a box marked with a number one, and inside it were my daughter’s baby clothes, folded, and the hospital bracelet from the day Marguerite was born, and a photograph I had lost eleven years ago.