So he stared at Ruth. It took all the energy he had to keep his eyes on her without getting drawn away by the woman by the clothesline. He could feel her calling to him. He could see her standing beside a doorway to another place, another time, and another world. Her hair was bright in the sunlight, and she was waiting.

Ruth touched Paul’s face. She was crying. Her tears fell upon him. They saturated his clothes and gathered in the wrinkles on the skin of his aged neck.

And he was whisked away from his own mind for a brief moment.

The woman from the clothesline had carried him away into a memory. She took him through an entire storybook of his own life. A life he never knew he was so proud of until this very moment. He saw the farm where he was born. He saw the swing his father hung from the old tree by the well. He saw the chicken coops. He saw the woman he married. He saw the day of her funeral. He saw Vern as a young man. He saw a lot.

Then his journey was stopped. He saw an old newspaper photograph. It was old. Dry-rotted at the corners with age. In the photo was a man, a younger version of himself, looking at the camera, with a baby in his lap. The child on his knee. It was his child. Even though it was not his blood, she was his life’s ambition. She’d given him something he never knew he needed. Something without a name.

He forced himself back into the land of the living. But he didn’t have the energy to speak.

Ruth kissed him. Over and over again, she kissed him.

Pete had crawled into the bed beside him and kept his body close to the old man.

Vern knelt at the bedpost and held Paul’s limp hand.

He had his family with him. He had them. He’d always had them. They were more than a family. They were the guide for a meandering life, giving him what a man like him was not worthy to have, but somehow received anyway by an act of divine mercy.

He was pulled from the world again. The woman from the clothesline led him to a cotton field, then a tobacco field, then a firepit.

Then he was in the newspaper office. He was holding the redheaded baby. He was looking at a newspaper clipping that read:

Lost baby rescued near Rabbit Creek, Mobile, Ala. Red hair, violet eyes. In care of Paul Foldger until appropriate person or persons step forward.

Ruth’s kisses on his forehead brought him back.