It was Prudence who first sought him to speak. Norman in the parlor, pipe clamped, a newspaper spread open on his lap as if any moment he’d take it up to read. A fire clucked in the grate. Through the closed door to the kitchen the sounds of Abby washing her hair. Even with the door the sweet woman-scent of soap and wet and steam. The mantelpiece clock dragged its hands up and around and down as if weighing a judgment upon him. A jurist clock. The newsprint before him only so much of everything that didn’t matter. Time, after all, was not made up of small things but a spare handful of events after which the world was changed. He’d thought he learned this in the war. He’d learned nothing. Or he had to relearn the same thing over and over. Which made him doubt that any of it mattered. Of what use, the life of ignorance. The question was central, could not be avoided, could not be answered. After all, he knew it was either a small mind that found solace in the day to day or a thriving mind that found purpose. He could not say which. All he knew was he owned neither. And then heard her steps coming downstairs, pictured her before he saw her, the navy high-necked dress spread evenly with a pattern of frail fine white ovals, her feet bare, still corned and calloused despite the early snow and the chill of upstairs, the mass of uncared-for pumpkin hair, her splotched skin spread over features broad and rough and true, her body beneath the dress the duplicate of his sister. He even knew by something purpose-filled in her downward tread that she was coming to him. That she had something, some message, to deliver. And he smoked his pipe and tilted down to the paper and waited for her.

She said, standing over him, before him, her gravity keeping her from sofa or chair, “Got something to tell you.”

“What’s that?”

She scowled, her lips pressed. “I should’ve told you before now.”

He slowly folded the newspaper and placed it on the side table. Palmed his pipe and laid that hand in his lap. “What should you’ve told me before?”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing what you’re thinking. Nothing to have changed anything.”

“Did she talk to you? Tell you something?”

“No. It’s nothing like that. No, she didn’t talk to me.” Her eyes flat and squarely upon him now. And he knew she was not lying and knew she was not quite telling the truth either. Guessed she held some information intuited or overheard or guessed at, arrived at in some fashion she either didn’t completely trust or didn’t feel was hers by right to tell him. A right she’d concluded and so was staunch by. He admired this of her as much as it frightened him; wondering what in life would wear this thin for her. Sooner or later, most everything.