“Nat, where’s your mommy?” Karen asked. “And daddy?” she added.
The child waved in the direction of the House on the Hill. “I like your new bob,” Karen said. No answer. “Let’s go home and get something to eat. I just drove up from the city and I’m starving.”
“No, thanks.” The child sounded out of breath, but spoke firmly. She might have been going for hours.
“Your parents might be worried,” Karen said. She took a step and grabbed one little hand. “I insist,” she said. The child looked up, mouth pursed in anger. “Hey, I’m your aunt Karen,” she said. “We played with my phone on the porch last time I was here. You remember me?”
“We’re related?” It was such an adult question. But Karen could see where it came from.
“Sure,” she said. “In a sense.”
“My daddy said Uncle Ed was coming, but he doesn’t like to play with children.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“But I don’t remember you at all.”
“Let me drive you up in my car.”
“Mommy said I should never get into a stranger’s car.”
“Mommy’s supersmart about that. But I’m not a stranger.”
“That’s what a stranger would say.” The logic on her.
“True. But I really think they might be worried about you. It’s going to be dark any second.”
“Okay, but I have to say goodbye to the sheep and the sheepdog.”
“Cool. I’d like to see that.”
The child went up to the fence separating her from the barking, braying animals. “Goodbye, sheep. Goodbye, Luna,” she said. And then bowed rigidly, like a boy-band member accepting an award. The animals seemed to calm down instantly, as if they had seen this routine before. Luna, her growl now hoarse and simmering, followed them to the brightly lit car with its clever Mancunian voices on the satellite radio.
“I don’t really know how to buckle in a child,” Karen admitted to herself as much as to Nat. “Also, I realize you and I shouldn’t be too close.”
“Because of the virus,” Nat said.
“Yeah, until this is over. Which will be really soon.”
“Or not,” said the girl. Smart like her mother, Karen thought, and just as optimistic. She buckled her into the back realizing she had never smelled a child’s sweat before and that everything they said about it was true. “Thanks, Aunt Karen,” the child said politely. The last time she had seen Senderovsky he had complained at length about his daughter’s difficulties and the fifty-nine-thousand-dollar tuition at a school that not only tolerated differences but, according to its card-stock brochure, celebrated them, to the point where Karen turned on her friend and with an eye roll that was a standard part of her vocabulary said, “Gee, maybe you should send her back to China.”
She drove slowly up the long driveway, checking on her passenger in the rearview mirror. Even in the dusk, she could spot the white branches littering the front lawn like an arboreal Gettysburg. All these years and Senderovsky still couldn’t take care of himself. That thought made her grin. Same, same Sasha. Her headlights caught an unfamiliar figure running toward them from the house, screaming very distinctly, “Nat! Nat! Nat!,” and Karen’s passenger announced, “That’s my mommy.” Karen squinted. She had always held the image of Masha from the early days when they were all worried that she didn’t eat enough. Masha, in her motherly haste, almost ran headlong into the car, so that Karen had to pull over into the grass, a giant white oak branch crunching beneath a wheel.
Masha opened the back door and began to unbuckle her daughter, fingers fumbling, as she half shouted, half cried, “Where were you? Where were you? Where were you?”
“She was singing to the sheep,” Karen said, quietly, having learned how to deal with unhappy parents in her formative stage, though that wasn’t fair to Masha. “It was cute.” They had all exited the car now, and Masha was on her knees on the gravel, bits of it stinging her feet, holding the child by the shoulders.
“You don’t do that!” she shouted. She grabbed the long tie, one of Sasha’s, most likely, and began to unwind it with fumbling fingers.
“No!” Nat cried. “Mommy, leave it on!”
“You’ll choke yourself,” Masha said as she ripped off the tie and shoved it into the pocket of her kaftan. The girl started crying loudly. Karen could now see Sasha descending from the house in what she refused to believe was a dressing gown. She did not understand Masha’s fear. Had she really thought her daughter had run away from them? Where would she go?