Abigail interrupted. “Living and breathing the both of us as you can see. And your grandfather, his own father, alive and mostly hearty too until just two years this past March.”

“The thing is—” Foster faltered. “The thing that’s hard to explain is after my mother and sister died we just didn’t talk about whatever used to be. I think that was a lot of it. Also, he worked for years in one of the big hotels over there, the Sinclair. Was a manager. But that trade’s slowed awful the past years and there’s lots of men without work. But Pop had a liquor business going. A pretty good one I guess. And it wasn’t like people didn’t know what he did. But still we kept close-mouthed. I think it was all just habit. And so no, he never did tell me about you people here. I didn’t have any idea. And I still don’t. I don’t know a thing about what’s going on here or who you two are or any of it.”

He stopped himself. As if he’d gone too far and still not far enough. Both women watching him: Abigail detached, amused, his father’s hawk eyes floating out of her head; Prudence back in her chair, slumped a little as if at rest, studying him.

Foster stood and went around the table and filled his glass again and drank it down and refilled it. As he did this Prudence stood and waited for him and told him to come follow her and they went down a hall to a parlor door, Abigail following. The parlor sofa was of old dark wood with a funereal blue-black upholstery. Heavy drapes of the same material flanked the windows. The rest of the furniture was even older: a spindle-backed Boston rocker, a set of slender-legged tables, a small dovetailed blanket chest, a newspaper stand by the rocker. Prudence took up a gas lamp from one of the tables and lighted it and carried it to the mantel behind a parlor stove with ornate fenders and sculpted legs. She set the lamp beside an eight-day clock and stepped back to let Foster come close. On the wall above the mantel was a double portrait in an oval frame.

He looked at the man first and quickly. Young, stern-faced to the camera, deepset dark eyes sadder than his age, a thick burst of dark hair. But it was the woman. Dark-skinned with a wiry rage of hair pulled back away from her face. A Negro woman. He could not tell her age but she was young. Even in the faded dunyellow of the portrait her mouth was a dark lustrous fruit upon her face, her nose hawked from the bridge down to her nostrils. Her pale-colored eyes reared up as if her gaze intended to travel far beyond that moment and wait—wary forever for whomever it might need to meet. Ferocious eyes, he thought. Then he looked back at the man and decided his eyes were less sad than keenly pitched also, as if he had determined to face the world squarely and then gaze beyond it to some world of his own making.