With her mother out on the town every other night, seven-year-old Felicia is often left with a sitter in their New York apartment. The sitters are always variable; to Felicia, they are nameless, interchangeable, fleeting. "Nobody stayed anywhere very long anymore," Felicia's mother tells her — a fact she attributes, in part, to the ethos of the city. Felicia's mother suggests that "all this would be miraculously changed" when "the fathers came back" — ostensibly from WWII. Indeed, her mother suggests that when Felicia's father returns, the family will retire from the city to the suburbs, and live in domestic harmony. One dark, winter's night, another sitter arrives at the door. There's an unusual quality to her; she's pale, elegant, and sorrowful. Unlike the rest of the sitters, who would, upon arrival, usher Felicia into her bedtime routine, this woman sits at the kitchen table with her and remarks, "You look like a child that I knew once, and this is the anniversary of that child." Felicia shows interest in her lookalike, and the sitter launches into a tragic tale of her time in a concentration camp. Imprisoned in this camp, as she battled brutal cold and starvation, the sitter came to know and love small girl; one whose mother "went away." The sitter explains that the girl's mother never came back — along with many other people who had to "go away" on trains without seats. As she brushes Felicia's hair, the sitter recounts doing the same for the little girl — whom she unofficially adopted three years ago, to the day. When Felicia asks what happened to the little girl, the sitter says, "they must all be asleep somewhere." Felicia's mother comes home after midnight to find the woman and her daughter huddled together, asleep in the living room.