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.”

“I’m sure he was,” she told him. And again turned her head and cried back into the house, “Abigail!” A beat for each syllable and coming down hard on the last so that it sounded to Foster like two small preludes and a final hard chord. Prudence looked back at him and said, “He was tender, your father was. Always. But he never found a way to allow that part of him. Not that I knew. Now you’re telling me he did.” Her face working like some clockwork lay behind it, the works of sorrow as she spoke. “I expect you’re right. You knew him much after I ever did.”

Foster did not know he knew this until he said it. “I think all he ever wanted was to make things right. And maybe he didn’t know how to do that. Or maybe he just had bad luck. But what I remember was that he tried.”

As he said this he heard the tread of someone coming down the hall behind Prudence. He rocked forward to see past the splintered sunlight who it was. And Prudence seemed to rise a little as if alerted but was also bent sideways, craning past him, and then her hands flew up and she cried out. “Is that your dog after the chickens? Boy? Foster? Look there.”