The obituary goes on to identify Father and “Mary’s” only surviving child as Edwin.

—

On a sunny afternoon, Rosalie sits in the Exeter kitchen with Joe Hall. They are both drinking coffee—his with two big spoonfuls of sugar, hers with a splash of gin. Joe has stopped by with some of the spring produce for Mother—slender carrots and pale radishes and green onions—but Mother and Asia are out ordering wedding clothes. Rosalie tries to talk Joe into staying until they return, but he says he can’t. He says that Ann would fret. He just has time for the coffee.

“I guess you’ve heard that Asia is to marry Sleeper Clarke,” she says.

“It’s good news,” Joe Hall says. “Mighty good news. Fine man. She’ll be living in Philadelphia then.”

“She will.”

“Do you think she would look in on our Pinkney and our Mary Ellen? I expect they’re in Philadelphia now. Ann and me, we’d sure like to know how they get on. I don’t have an address,” Joe says.

“Of course she will.” This is a lie. Rosalie can’t imagine how Asia would find the two Halls if they’re in hiding. But perhaps they’re not. Perhaps they count on Aunty Rogers and her husband not tracking them down.

Outside there’s a sudden battle, dogs against pigs, by the sound of it, barking and squealing, and several men shouting for it all to stop. The noise moves down the street at a run.

Across from her, Joe Hall has closed his eyes. He sits, swaying slightly, as if he’s gone to sleep while upright at the table, his two hands wrapped around his cup. Since his eyes are closed, Rosalie feels free to examine him closely. The sun is falling hard on him, deepening every line on his face, and there is a mass of those lines, a map of years and worries. One of his front teeth has gone yellow. He’s still a big man, but his chest has caved in and his shoulders curved. Rosalie used to ask him how old he was. That’s something I never did know, he’d say.

She’s known him all the years of her life. His was one of the first faces she’d ever seen, looking down as she lay in the wicker cradle he’d made for her. In that time before memory, his face was already there.

It occurs to Rosalie that someday she’ll see him for the last time and that this could be that very day. What will his grave marker look like? It won’t even have a birth date.

Rosalie will be proved prescient in all of this. He’ll die two years later, neither the date of birth nor death on his stone. He’ll never again see his son and his daughter, the children who fled.