He glanced at us—we were all looking at him—and took her place at the table. We heard Irene’s feet go down the stairs and her steps on the path and then, because we were listening, the hinges of Robbert’s screen door wheeze open and clack shut. Robbert poked his chin at what I’d found, spread out on the table.“What’s this?”It took a long time to tell, though now the others could tell it, too, and so they helped. Robbert had questions, just like Irene, but his questions were different, like between a sandwich with mustard and without, or a wet stone and a dry one, or the sounds of night compared to day. Partly this was because Irene had seen all the girl’s things for herself, out in the grass. But even so, Robbert’s questions weren’t about his own thinking—though we could all see that he was thinking—but about the words we used to describe each object, and most especially the pictures.When he finished his soup he set the bowl down with enough of a noise that Caroline, who was comparing the boxes in the picture of the dock to the boxes from our supply boat, stopped talking.
