And she looked down where she clutched him and as if understanding something of his confusion and even fright she let go of him and took her hand in her other before her but at the same time she spoke. “I’m Prudence Pelham. Pru or Prudy is what all calls me though. To you I guess I’m your Aunt Pru but that sounds strange don’t it. Although I’ve thought of myself that way for years, knowing about you and that dear little girl also, your sister that died. But I never did hear or even speak the words out loud. So you call me what you like—Pru or Aunt or both or neither. Oh I can’t tell you how you look like Father, your grandfather. Yes indeed, look at you. Those great wide eyes. You never seen anything like me I guess.” And again she turned without pause to shout back into the house, “Sister you come look right now!” And back to Foster, still speaking. “I’m a shock to you, I can see that. So you didn’t know what to expect. I’m not surprised by that. What’s happened to your father, that you’re here? What kind of trouble’s he in?”

Foster rocked. When he stepped back he came to rest with one foot up on a small hummock of grass that othertimes he’d not of noticed. But now it had him off balance and his right leg was shaking, the knee beating like a wing. He looked at the woman, her wide mouth with stained teeth. He said, “He’s dead.”

“Oh my,” she said and laid both hands up flat on the breast of her sweater. “Oh no,” she said. Her face working then swift through changes. She said, “What happened to him? It wasn’t good, was it.”

And her pain so bright like focused sunlight over her face touched him and he took a step closer to her and his voice soft he said, “It was an accident was what they said.”

She tipped her chin toward him and her eyes were wet but very clear and angry and she said, “But it wasn’t, was it?”

What no one had said. And so it was easy to rock back and forth before this strange old woman and tell her. “No. I don’t guess it was. Just made to look like one. And what I think, looking like one served too much purpose to too many people to find it otherwise.”

And she took her hands down and said, “I feared for him. Always. Not a day went by in my life that I didn’t. He was angry over everything, your father was. And he wanted everything also.”

Foster said, “He was a good man. Was good to me.”