“No.” He dismisses the matter with a loud, “How’s San Antonio?”

“We’re in New York, Joy and I.” I hitch my head toward the door, but she has gone out to get our bags from the car. “My daughter.”

He scowls. “Well, I know that. Why do you people think I can’t remember things? I didn’t get where I am today with a bad mind.” He returns to his paper.

“Whatcha reading?”

“I’m not read-ing.” He enunciates the word the way he always used to when he disagreed with something I said. “I’m doing the cross-word puz-zle. People without memories can’t do those, in case you’re wondering.”

“I’m sure your memory is fine,” I say in an effort to appease.

He glares at me. “And if it isn’t? And if it isn’t? I have a right to forget things once in a while. I’m seventy-two, for chrissake.” His brows are still menacing when they come together. They’re more gray than his silver hair, and messier. “Don’t you have something else to do?”

I certainly do, like ask him if he has a gun. But his own question is so Tom Aldiss–ornery at a time when Tom Aldiss is fading, that I leave the moment alone. Besides, Joy is coming through the front door with the bags. So I rise and go to help.

The stairs to the second floor hug the round turret walls, and while worn carpet runners mute sound, the creaks beneath it have multiplied since last I was here. I know. I used to be intimate with those creaks. When we were growing up, staying out late involved risk. Mom wasn’t bad; she would often appear at her door to see which one of us it was and put a finger to her lips in warning before slipping back inside.

“Omigod, Mom, these are amazing,” Joy breathes before I can dredge up the consequences of Dad being the one to find us.

Having stopped several steps behind me, she is studying the photos on the wall—because here they are as they always were, lining the turret, our front porch shots from the beginning of time. Funny, how I would have walked past them. I’ve seen them so many times in my life that they’re like wallpaper, and my mind is elsewhere. Now I see what my daughter sees, no wallpaper these.

The earliest are black-and-white close-ups of Mom, Dad, and Margo, labeled 1978 and 1979 in white marker, very small and slanted in the lower right-hand corner. Come 1980, I’m the one in Mom’s arms, and while the year remains marked in white, the photos are in color.