“She’s fine. She says to tell you hello. Can I come in?”

“Um, wait here a minute, okay?”

He stepped back into the house and I heard him talking to a woman in Spanish. My Spanish was marginal but I understood he was telling her about me. I could not hear her end of the conversation but then she appeared at the door, Nick behind her. She was short, gray-haired, stocky and as primally female as the Venus of Willendorf. Mrs. Trejo, I assumed.

Wiping her hands on her apron, she asked, bluntly, “Who are you, mister?”

I again explained who I was and why I was there.

“Does Nick have some money coming to him from this life insurance?”

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe as much as a hundred thousand dollars.”

“I didn’t know about any insurance,” Nick said.

“Well, regardless, the policy was in force when Bill died and the insurance agent who wrote it made the claim on your behalf. If I could just have a few minutes of your time.”

She looked me up and down, then said, “Eres mexicano, no?”

“My dad was from Mexico, my mom was Mexican-American. You’ll have to excuse me though, I don’t speak Spanish very well.”

“Shame on you,” she said, mildly, as she opened the door. “Come in, Mister Rios. We can talk in the kitchen.”

We passed through a living room carpeted in gold shag. Well-worn armchairs and a couch covered in a blue chenille bedspread were arranged around a big screen TV. A ceramic panther with green glass eyes guarded a TV Guide opened to the half-completed crossword on the coffee table. Atop the TV was a planter filled with plastic roses. The wall above the couch was lined with framed high school graduation photos of three boys and one girl, each in a robe and mortar board, one of them Nick. The air was warm, musty and lived in, the product of years of bodies in close quarters; the smell of family.

The kitchen, painted sunshine yellow, was almost as big as the living room. Dominating the room was a large square table covered by a flower-patterned oilcloth and surrounded by six cane-backed chairs. Built-in shelves held plates, glasses and cups. There was a five-gallon tin of lard in one corner and beside it a big sack of flour. On the table was a bowl of oranges, a plastic red tortilla warmer, a bowl of salsa covered with plastic wrap, and the morning paper. A pot of beans simmered on a four-burner gas stove. Adela, the little girl, was sitting at the table with a coloring book. I felt like I’d stepped back into my maternal grandmother’s house where I’d once been the child at the table, only with a book for reading, not coloring.

Mrs. Trejo said, “Adelita, go watch TV. The grownups have to talk.” Uncomplainingly, the girl took her book and crayons and left the room.