Have to shake my head, to dislodge these phantasmal memories. So many years haunted, I am not always sure what is real, and what is not-real; what I have seen with my own eyes, and what I have imagined might have been by my eyes if I’d been in the right place at the right time.

Oh!—here is the “new” house. As the family calls it.

A mild shock, the house at 111 Harrison Street is considerably smaller than my parents’ old house, more ordinary, even run-down, though also shingled wood-frame painted gray, on a smaller lot.

Just a stoop at the front. No real second floor except what appears to be an attic room beneath a peaked roof. (Where Lionel is living?) One of numerous post-war houses cheap-built as Daddy would say with a sneer, along streets like Harrison.

Probably my father repainted this house, did some repairs. With a mortgage he’d bought it as a temporary measure, deeply in debt from lawyers’ bills. Must’ve pained Jerome Kerrigan to live here, a man who’d taken such pride in maintaining his property.

Badly cracked asphalt driveway is so narrow, you’d hardly imagine that a full-sized car could drive on it. A blighted elm, most of the tree removed, only a trunk remaining in the front yard.

In a working-class neighborhood it had seemed crucial to mark small distinctions. Black Rock Street with a row of houses overlooking the Niagara River was acknowledged to be a superior place to live set beside lesser streets like Harrison. See what I have done for my family—a father’s statement of pride.

So nervous, I have been sitting for several minutes in the car parked at the curb trying to summoning my courage. It’s as if the outer layer of my skin has been peeled away. I have not told Tyrell Jones much about my life, nor has Tyrell asked me though yes, he does know who I am. Impossible to have grown up in Port Oriskany without being familiar with the name Kerrigan. But I’d told him that my father had died suddenly, I had to depart at once for South Niagara and so—would he take Brindle home with him for a while?—and without hesitation he’d said yes. Of course.

Tyrell also said Whatever happens, Violet—there will be some logic to it.

Logic! I want to believe this.

My wish is to live a life in which emotions come slowly as clouds on a calm day. You see the approach, you contemplate the beauty of the cloud, you observe it passing, you let it go. You do not dwell upon what you have seen, you do not regret it. You are content to understand that the identical cloud will never come again, no matter how beautiful, unique. You do not weep at its loss.