His head downtilted, his eyes cutting up to study the house, the strangeness there. Another woman had come out the front door, this one taller, in a dress. Standing talking to the first one. Abigail. Abigail and Prudence. Foster not understanding anything yet, except that everything was changed. And not even feeling this yet except as a veneer over him, a shiver of knowledge. Wondering if he might not just walk Glow back to the car and get in himself and drive away. Knowing he could not and angry with himself for even thinking he might want to.

Then the taller woman started down the lawn toward him and he rose, hobbling bent over with the straining Glow toward the car. Abigail coming around the front of the car as he opened the door and got Glow up inside and rolled the window up enough to keep her in and shut the door. And straightened then and turned.

The strangeness convulsed within him, twofold. The world unraveling and knitting itself together at once. The woman before him was some version of his father. Taller, in an old-fashion highnecked dress of pearl-gray, with her hair drawn back tight behind her head. But with his father’s features. The same olive-toned skin tight over fine bones, high features, deftly sculpted. The same crisp lips, pouched and taut. The same eyes running over him and taking him in. The nostrils with a broader flare but even that flare delicate, arched out as if the tissue and filament of her face were built to taste the world. The second convulsion indistinguishable from the first—he’d not until now understood that a woman older than twenty-three or so could be beautiful. And this shock of recognition and desire rose in him together and he felt as if he were someway deformed and he felt this knowledge rise up hot over his face and he looked away from the woman, up the lawn toward the house to check and make sure the other woman was there also, thinking that if she was it would someway lessen his monstrousness. And she stood, Prudence, with fists on hips, watching them. He guessed she someway knew what he was feeling, had known it herself other ways all her life. And he felt tenderness toward her and looked again to Abigail before him.

She held out a hand toward him, the slender long arm encased in a dress sleeve with a flourish of lace rising to rim her wrist. She said, “I’d bet a dollar you were thinking you should just get in your automobile and scoot. Get away from all this. I’m Abigail.”

He took her hand, thin bones, dry. “I found the letters you sent to my father.”

“Pru tells me he’s dead.”

“Yes ma’am. He is.”

She let go of his hand. “And you drove over here.”

“I did.”

She studied him. Then said, “You’re what? Sixteen?”

“Just turned.”

She nodded. “It’s a lot, isn’t it?”

“Yes ma’am.”