“Your mother said that’s what you would call me if we ever met. She’s right, she’s always right.” He took a step back and, still holding her hands, seemed to almost inhale the vision before him. “She’s right about your eyes too, green like hers. But you’re tall like me. I guess you got your height from me, though precious little else.” He looked at her through the scrim of tears in his eyes.

“Well, I can’t make jewelry, Dad. But I sew.”

“Oh, your mother sews so beautifully.”

Then it struck Rose. He doesn’t know she’s dead. “And how is she, Rose?” The words came out in a rush now. “She left that last time. It was a dangerous time, but she promised to come back. She will now, won’t she? Now that you’ve come.”

“Dad, Dad.” Rose lifted her hand to her father’s lips to gently stop this storm of words.

“Rose, why are you crying so?”

Like waves crashing on a beach, sobs were breaking from her, racking her whole body. “Come come, dear, let’s sit on the bench right over there.” He helped her to the bench. “She’s still not worried about those times, is she? Times are better now. Safer. At least as long as King Edward lives.”

“Dad, it’s not that. It’s not the Tower. It’s not beheadings. There are other dangers in our world.” Nicholas Oliver’s mouth began to quiver. It was almost as if his mouth could not find the shape of the word he wanted to say.

“Whh . . . what other dangers? The sweating disease. Did she catch the sweating disease?”

“No. Cars.”

“Cars,” he said vaguely.

“Dad, Mom is dead. She was killed in a car accident.”

He crumpled forward, grasping his knees. His eyes seemed to twitch with a strange look of incomprehension. “Cars,” he said. “Automobiles.”

“Yes, Dad. Did Mom tell you about them?”

“A little. She drove one. It was hard to imagine.”

“I suppose so. But sometimes there are accidents. Bad accidents where the car crashes and catches fire.”

“Fire!”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice. She couldn’t tell him the horrible part, the “no remains” part. “She died.”

“Oh my God!” His broad back heaved and a most awful sound escaped from the deepest part of his chest. Rose wrapped her arms around him. He buried his head in her shoulder. She was uncertain how long they remained clasping each other. Finally, the quaking sound of his weeping subsided. He drew out a large cloth and wiped his nose. She could see the effort it took for him to speak again. “And where have you been living?”

“With my grandmother.”

“In Indianapolis?” Just the name of that city coming out of her father’s mouth somehow shocked Rose.

“You know about Indianapolis?”