"Go back in, baby. Put some shoes on."
"Dessa was crying about Bosun. I heard her." The child looked at Toomer. "You said he was with Daddy. Mama. You said he went to be with Daddy on the boat."
Viola Gadsden closed her eyes. When she opened them she did not look at Toomer. She went down on one knee on the wet concrete in her white uniform, by the ice machine, and took the child's face in both her hands.
"I have to go to work," she said. "I have to go to work right now, or Mrs. Bunch is going to dock me, and we need that money. Tonight, when I get home, I'm going to tell you everything. All right? Everything. I promise. You stay with your sister today and you mind her."
"Is he alive?"
Viola Gadsden held her daughter's face for a long moment. Toomer watched her decide. She watched it go across her face like a cloud shadow across the marsh, there and gone.
"Yes, baby," she said. "He's alive."
The child did not jump or shout. She did not do anything that Toomer expected. She just stood there with her mother's hands on her face and her eyes filled up, and she said, very quietly, "I knew it. I knew he wasn't with Daddy. Daddy would've sent him back."