At the curb Lionel asks about your car. Impressed that you own a car, have a driver’s license. As if Violet Rue has surprised her big brother, all grown up.

“Did you buy the car new?”—Lionel can’t resist asking.

“N-No. Not new.”

From Katie you know that Lionel hasn’t (yet) acquired a driver’s license. If and when he gets a license he will have the use of your father’s car which is in the garage, not often used. For all practical purposes it is Lionel’s car now but you don’t mention this.

Nothing to make Lionel think that people are talking about him. Nothing to provoke suspicion, anxiety.

How surreal it seems to you, walking to Black Rock Street with your brother Lionel. Side by side, companionably, with the brother you’d feared for so many years. Badly you wish that your father could see you—the two of you.

Trying not to despair, that your father has died before you could be reconciled. You have been hoping that your mother will confide in you—You know, Violet, Dad really had forgiven you. He’d said so many times.

If Daddy saw you with Lionel, he’d have understood that Lionel has forgiven you. Why not, then, him?

Lionel has put on dark glasses, to protect his eyes from the sun. Like you, he walks with a slight limp, as if with each step he is resisting pain. You would never inquire of course but have to assume that he was injured in prison.

Your injured knee has long since mended. You can walk swiftly, and you can run. But if the knee begins to ache you know better than to persevere. A day, two days without straining it—you are all right again.

You wonder if Lionel has noticed the little star-shaped scar on your forehead? You’ve found a way to comb hair over it, at a slant so that it is almost invisible.

Though Mr. Sandman had shrewdly observed: it is futile to try to hide your scar.

Tyrell has not seemed to notice the little scar. Tyrell with his tucked-in smile and awkward poise. Have to assume, a black man in a white world sees more than he feels obliged to acknowledge.

Here is a surprise: Black Rock Street. Turn a corner, you are there.

How dismayed your father would be that houses on Black Rock Street have been allowed to deteriorate. A neighbor’s driveway is badly cracked, there’s a homemade FOR SALE sign at the curb.

Several houses in need of paint. Roof repair. Trees needing pruning. You see with your father’s sharp eye, his instinct for imminent ruin. You have come to feel the burden of adulthood of which children and adolescents know nothing: the responsibility of maintaining property.

And there at 388 Black Rock is our house. Stopped in your tracks, you stare and stare.