I could have said, Oh, a friend's baby. I'd said it before. Instead I put the coffeepot back on the burner and wiped my hands on my apron and said, "A little boy I took care of for a while. When he was very small."
"Like a babysitter?"
"Like a foster mother," I said. "Do you know what that is?"
He nodded. He didn't look away from the Polaroid. "When the real mom can't."
"When the real mom can't for a while," I said. "That's right."
"What was his name?"
"Dougie." I hadn't said it out loud in nine years. It came out of my mouth like something with corners. "His name was Dougie."
The boy was quiet. On the jukebox, which had been silent all day, something clicked over, and the machine thought about it, and then put on "I Just Called to Say I Love You," which nobody had paid for, which it did sometimes, the Seeburg, play a song out of nothing as if it had been saving up.
"What happened to him?" the boy said.
"He went home to his mother," I said. "She got better and she got him back. That's what's supposed to happen. That's what the whole thing is for."
"Were you sad?"