“He just wouldn’t do something like that.” What I meant to say was that Mouse wouldn’t murder somebody in a crowded place in the daylight, but those details weren’t important to make clear to my child.

I was considering the talk I’d have to have with Mouse when Feather said, “I was thinking that maybe I’d change my name.”

“Change your name to what?” Some years earlier I’d legally adopted Feather, giving her my last name. I feared she was about to reject this christening.

“Genevieve.” She pronounced the name in the French way, using all four syllables.

“Why Genevieve?”

“I like the way it feels in my mouth and it’s French and I speak French and my good friends could call me Ginny.”

“Why don’t we go inside and get warm?”

I made long-grain white rice and heated up a pot of frozen blue crab gumbo thickened by both gumbo filet and fried okra. Feather loved that stew and I did too. We ate for a while and she explained how geometry defines the old universe while Mr. Einstein’s theory of relativity described the new one.

“So could there be two different universes?” I asked the chomping child.

“Of course. Maybe even a billion of them. Maybe we could live in a completely different place by just thinking about it.”

She was coming to the end of the bowl.

I was just about to tell her to go up and take a shower when instead I said, “Your uncle, your real uncle, Milo Garnett, came by the office yesterday.”

“Who?”

“Your mother’s brother from back east.”

Feather put her spoon down and leaned back.

She already knew the broad strokes of her mother’s life and death. More than a year before, she’d asked if we could find her grandmother and any other family, but this was the first real chance she had at meeting her blood. I told her that Milo had heard about her and come all the way to California to meet her. And, oh yeah, he’s a hippie.

“How tall is he?” was her second question.

I told her.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“He seems like a nice young man,” I said after a bit. “And he traveled almost three thousand miles to meet you.”

“Why didn’t him and his mom try to talk to me before?”

“I think he was a kid and his mother was heartbroken over the deaths of her daughter and husband,” I said delicately.

“But why’s he here now?”

“I guess he grew up enough to make up his own mind.”

“Where is he?”

“Staying with friends.”

“Do I have to see him?”

“Not right now. Not until you’re ready. If you don’t want to see him, you don’t have to.”

“What do you think I should do, Daddy?”