The girl on the swing has brown hair. Hers would have been red. I’m almost sure of it. My mother was a redhead. My grandmother was a redhead. It runs in the blood so deep that I can’t imagine it skipping a generation just because the other half of the equation was dark-haired and monstrous.
She’d have freckles across the bridge of her nose. She’d be stubborn. She’d be loud.
I don’t cry. I used to, whenever I came by here and did exactly what I’m doing right now, but I’ve trained that out of myself. Crying is a door, and once you open it in a place this public, it’s almost impossible to shut it again.
The mother looks over. Our eyes meet across thirty feet of woodchips and rubber matting, and I watch her face change when she sees me staring. She stops the swing mid-arc, scoops the girl o
