That morning she was on the front porch.

She was sitting there in the shadow busy with some one of her many little pastimes, all mysteries to me. She seemed to be shifting piles of twigs or picking at cracks in the planking but she had indicated to me they were stories and realms of rich activities. She had offered to tell the tales to me but I had declined.
Sometime, though, I might take her up on it and see if I were calling her bluff.
This morning, while it was still cool, and fresh in the shadow which lingered across the porch, Olive sat whispering and shuffling her ubiquitous piles in a striped Tshirt too short for her and worn red shorts. All her clothes seemed to be that way, worn and the wrong size. She was thin; she looked as though she had been stretched by El Greco though I don't know if she was tall for her age. I don't think so but I don't know anything about children. I don't know any children. I don't know Olive and I don't want to.
But there she was, on the porch, here for the day and leaving with me this evening.

There was Olive on the porch.

Olive was five. Or six. Her mother was in Mexico. I know nothing about her father. The woman who was looking after Olive was some relative of his, but she was old and her health was failing. Whatever that meant. Maybe it was just an excuse. Who'd want to be saddled, leashed, by a small child not one's own?
That's all the note said.
Olive offered up the crumpled bit to me last Tuesday morning when I opened my door and expected to leave for work in my junky car just like any morning I had an on-site job.
There was Olive on the porch looking up at me with her large black eyes. Her eyes, her face with its sharp chin, were like an old woman's face. She was strangely old, too, sober and intent on her tasks in her silent way. This didn't mean she was efficient. There had been more disasters in my cabin since she had arrived than ever before in its long history.