Driving to Camp Lend-A-Hand

for Emma Grace The day we picked our daughter up from camp, goldenrod lined the road, towheaded scouts bowing on both sides, the parting of macadam as we drove, the fields dry, the sky lacy with clouds. A farmer waved.  A horse shrugged its haughty head. We stopped for corn, just picked, and plums and kale, sampled pies, still warm, and tarts and honeyed bread. Sheets on a line ballooned out like a ship’s sail. Time stopped in those miles before we saw her. For eight days we hadn’t tucked her in or brushed her hair or watched her grow, the week a busy blur of grown-up bliss.  It came anyway, that uprush of fear—because somewhere a child was dead: at a market, a subway, a school, in a lunatic’s bed.