She took a handkerchief from her dress pocket and blew her nose and cleaned her face. Wiped her eyes and cheeks and then her forehead. Not watching him, taking her time. Put the handkerchief away and looked to the mantelpiece clock, as if to make her decision upon something beyond them both. Then stepped eighteen inches and swung around and sat on the sofa, sweeping her dress against the backs of her legs as she went down, landing without effort and leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, her eyes back to him.

“All right,” she said. “Here I am.”

He told her of Sweetboro, of where her mother came from. Not the version she’d grown up with but the version that was his. At least told her what he would of that. Told her what happened to drive her mother north those last months of the war, named the people and told her as much as he knew, as much as he remembered, as much as he fathomed of it all, speaking of emotions flared and those tamped back; attempted to explain the ties of blood both active and violent and those refused, insidious, ignored. And so again attempted witness: to make location vivid and actual, true as could be made with something he knew nothing of but knew as well he felt as his own simple surround of hills and woodlots and livestock. Except that he could not come to any comprehension of her final short journey and so only left that there, in the air between himself and his daughter. Knowing that his telling of the old was enough. Knowing that she’d accept if not understand his failure to know more than he did. And he told it slowly, with great attention and care, backtracking over and over as small details slipped up from memory to skate the surface. Giving almost everything he had of it, not for absolution or mercy or grace or even any forgiveness of his faults or failures but simply to have it out, to have it shared and so owned by someone other than himself. And the only part he would not share, the only fact withheld, that he would not allow her, was the burden that her mother had murdered, that somewhere—not at the beginning, the true beginning, but that which propelled her mother out finally—was this act. Which he would not lay upon the daughter. Saw no gain made by such a burden. And so kept it for himself. When finished he was wet with sweat through his underwear and shirt beneath his arms and looked over his girl’s shoulder where she sat with sunken head and saw by the clock his telling had taken less than twenty minutes. And did not know if that mattered or to what degree. A span of time to hold another span within. And waited some minutes for response until he knew there would not be one, not then, perhaps not ever. And so knew she would rise before she did and watched her cross the room and turn at the door to tell him goodnight, her voice nearly not there. A voice lost of itself. As if, he thought, she did not believe him. As if she sensed something left out. And left him there then, a creature hunkered, hunched and broken upon himself, raw to a flaying, his hands troubled knobbed things helpless and useless in his lap, his spine and feet aching, his mouth dried, bitter, decayed. There was nothing he wanted.