Chapter 22: The Playground

Margo picked a park in Greenwich with a duck pond and a green climbing frame.

She texted me the gate number and wrote under it: Tuesday, four o'clock. I told her you're a friend.

I got there at ten to four, and sat on the bench farthest from the swings, and ate a granola bar I couldn't taste.

At four on the dot a cream SUV pulled up.

Posy got out of it by herself.

She wore rain boots with frogs on them, and she carried a rolled-up paper in one fist.

She stopped ten feet away and looked at me.

"You're the nice lady," she said. "With the granola bar."

"That's me."

"Mommy said your name is Tillie."

"It is."

"That's a funny name. Tillie. It sounds like a cat."

Margo stood by the car with her arms crossed over her coat.

I could see how much it cost her to stay there.

"My name sounded like a cat when I was your age, too," I said. "People used to call me Tillie Cat."

Posy thought about that.

"Meow," she said, experimentally.

I laughed, and my whole chest ached.

She climbed onto the bench, one boot at a time, and sat beside me with a good six inches between us.

"I drew you something," she said.

She unrolled the paper.

It was a picture in thick crayon of three people standing on green grass.

One had brown hair, one had auburn, and the third was very small and had a yellow triangle for a dress.

Over the brown-haired one she had written, in large wobbling letters, J O S.

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