She’s almost two. I’m seventy-five. I won’t be here when the worst of what’s coming comes. I think about it and then I try not to think about it. And then I try to think because if we don’t—but I can hardly grasp it. I mean her in it. The tiny glint of her voice. Something starts to collapse. Love and dread are brethren said a mystic woman in the Middle Ages. For a moment the sun reclines on the bare branches of the maples. They’re rinsed with gold. And then the light is gone. The tree is itself again. It’s time to return the baby to her father. The long beam of the lighthouse strobes the
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