“Good to know. Thank you.”

Ana noticed that Etta had made her way to the jungle gym, where she stood banging her head against a post over and over, laughing.

“We don’t know what it was like for her before …” said the woman, standing up.

“Before?”

The girl stopped her banging and returned to digging next to Finn.

“In China. They showed us the orphanage, and it was pretty nice, but now we’re hearing that’s not where they lived at all. They really kept them in a shed or something,” she said, and then looked at Ana and smiled darkly, shrugging.

“That must be—” said Ana. “You must worry.”

“What can you do?” she said, lighting another cigarette, offering one to Ana, who shook her head no.

“There are these cases now, where it turns out the kids weren’t actually given up in the first place. You know that whole ‘foundling by the side of the road’ idea?”

Ana nodded.

“Seems that might be a little exaggerated. Maybe some guy drives up on a moped, while the mother’s cooking or cleaning, and he just snatches the baby off the porch, sells her to an orphanage for a thousand bucks, which is a lot of money over there.”

“Jesus,” said Ana. “How do you know?” She pictured the adoption forms, unsigned, waiting in her desk at their house. Then she saw James in a long winding line marked RETURNS AND EXCHANGES, the last of hundreds of white people clutching Chinese babies, taking them back like defective sweaters.

Finn and Etta were pulling each other’s hair now. Ana didn’t know if the squeals meant pain or delight. She was about to say something—but what?—when the mother yelled: “Etta! No!”

Ana tried again: “So how do you know? What will people do?”

“Eh,” said the woman. “We love her. There’s very little to do but that.”

She picked up a courier bag from the bench. At this gesture toward leaving, Ana was filled with desperation.

“My name’s Ana,” she said suddenly, surprising herself. It was the kind of awkward introduction she suspected little children were enacting every few minutes on this exact playground—a proclamation, mired in need. But this woman had loosened a stream of loneliness that Ana hadn’t realized was hidden beneath all the events of the past few weeks. What she felt now, in this park, as Finn dug in the sand, was that she missed Sarah. She was aware of how selfish it was, but she missed Sarah’s friendship for herself. She missed her kindness. And if Sarah were back, if Sarah woke up, then Finn would be secure again, and Ana would be released. Sarah.

“Nice to meet you,” said the woman. “I’m sure we’ll see you here again.” She began to walk off, and Ana, stung by rejection, looked away, up at the trees, considering all the hurt feelings circling a playground. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman stop after a few steps, perhaps confronted by her own embarrassment, wondering how much sympathy to give, what shape she should lend to this tragedy. Ana saw her waver and root around for her better instincts. She left Etta to the sand a moment longer and returned to Ana’s side.

“I’m Jane,” she said. “I don’t think I said that. And, uh, you know—good luck with this. I’m sure it’s tough.”

Ana nodded, blinking back her gratitude.

With his friend gone, Finn came to Ana and stood close to her legs, fingers in his mouth. He seemed to be scanning the playground for the next distraction.

“What should we do, Finn?” asked Ana.

He pointed outside the iron fence, in the general direction of the open park, toward trees and far-off tennis courts. As they walked, he held out his hand, and Ana took it. She gripped the warm palm tightly.

Finn led her to a large tree and pointed up at the squirrels. There were two chasing each other around the trunk, first the brown one after the black one, then, with no warning, an unspoken shift, and the black one began chasing the brown one, furiously fast, their tails bobbing, ducking, and weaving. Finn was laughing and pointing, and Ana laughed, too, brought up by his lightness.

“Silly!” cried Finn.

“They are silly,” said Ana. “Ridiculous.”

Finn was laughing so hard he dropped her hand and placed his palms on his stomach like a small Santa Claus, shaking with giggles. Suddenly, Ana leaned down and hugged him. The gesture was a surprise to her but not to Finn, who separated from her embrace and then came in for another hug immediately, as if love was entirely expected.

October

ANA ROSE AT 6 A.M. in the darkness. She changed into her running gear in the bathroom so the light wouldn’t wake James. But also, she was hiding her body a little bit, not out of shame but fatigue, knowing that if he saw her naked leg, her toe extended en route to a sweat sock, he would rise sleepily and grab her, try to knead her flesh until it gave way to his. She would acquiesce, usually, and then the order of the morning would be flung apart, the pieces falling in the wrong place. This was James unemployed, always grabbing at her, rubbing up against her in the kitchen, in the foyer, winking when Finn appeared to quell things. Ana found it distasteful, drawing the child into some adult fantasy, the turn-on of the forbidden. If she indulged James so early in the morning, she would live with a tilted feeling all day.

The door to Finn’s room was open. Ana peered in at him, so small on the double bed. In the light from the hall, she saw that he had kicked off the quilt and lay sprawled on his stomach like a starfish, his back rising and falling. Ana shut the door, but after walking down the staircase, she questioned this gesture, wondered what fears he might have in him that only light could slay. She returned, opened it slightly. The boy had flipped onto his back, his arms still sprawled.

Outside, Ana felt the crack of the day opening wide as she ran. The streets were cold; she should have worn gloves, a hat warmer than the baseball cap on her head. She ran north, up the slight hill, past the houses that were beginning to rattle and stir. A light on here, a light there. She saw an old gray woman at a window, sipping from a mug. This woman lived only three houses from Ana, but Ana had never seen her on the street, did not know her name. She ran a little faster.

By the brothel house, a bag of garbage sat inside a recycling bin. It was always the dirtiest house on the block, the darkest. She could imagine, though, that when it went up for sale, it would go for near a million, just for the property itself, which had a huge parking pad at the side and a long elegant oak. The house would be razed. Something new would rise in its place, probably a modern echo of the houses around here, a gray concrete and glass structure with a winking Victorian sloped roof. A yard surrounded by imported grasses, sustainable and expensive. Ana could see in her mind’s eye exactly this oncoming glass house and thought: Fingerprints. All those fingerprints.

As she crossed Harbord, she saw the lights flicker on in a coffee shop. Her heart was beating fast now, and her fingers weren’t cold anymore. She never ran with music because she wanted to hear the city, really hear it, and she did. A dog barking, the whir of the streetcar. She thought of her work, of all the patent violations waiting for her. She passed an older couple, their arms linked cautiously, galoshes on their feet in anticipation of some weather Ana did not know was coming. They walked slowly. Ana tried to imagine herself and James as old as this, as entwined and frail.

What she had not imagined when she married was that love would turn out to be in constant movement, that it crept alongside most of the time but sometimes dove down, down into depths that Ana did not fear, but found repulsive, black, unwelcome. She knew that what they had was substantial, that it would rise again, break the surface to the light, but she was still angered by how often it left her. She had not known that she would have this in common with her own parents, who finally missed it too much, who could not bear its absence, and so split apart. But Ana did not want that. She did not want to be too weak to keep up with love. She needed to be stronger, to call it back to her. But she was so afraid, afraid of what it had become while it was away from her, afraid of what had gathered along its spine in the murk below, afraid she would not recognize its shape when it returned.