The door opened in and an old Negro, a short stout woman in her fifties, stepped into it. She wore heavy serge trousers tucked into knee-high rubber boots and an old sweater darned many times. Her face deeply wrinkled, skin the color of cinnamon but heavily splotched with tangerine freckles. Green eyes. A fierce head of hair, once the same color as her freckles but now salted with gray. She peered up at him and said, “Oh, my.”

“Oh, ma’am, excuse me,” Foster said. “I must have got the wrong turn.”

“Well I don’t guess so,” she replied.

He’d not seen a Negro but a couple of times and those from a distance. He stepped back off the granite onto the grass. “Excuse me,” he repeated. “I made a mistake.”

She stepped after him and snaked one hand out and grasped hard around his wrist as if to hold him there. Her hand hard knotted, freckled and calloused. “You look just like Father,” she told him. “You’re Jamie’s boy, aren’t you?” And then without waiting for an answer, without letting go of him she pivoted her head and called back into the house, “Sister come here look!”

And swiveled back to peer at him again and said, “You are Foster, aren’t you? Foster Pelham?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said. His voice coming out of him as from a great distance. Not understanding anything. Somewhere far back he cried out Poppy! Poppy!

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?”