He sat down on the hood of the dead sedan. “In the mornings, I walk about a block to Abadie’s, and by the time I get there, I’m sweating and out of breath. One time, I made it down to LeBlanc’s and sat on the bench under the tree and like to died.”

“It’s dizziness or what?”

“Doc says my liver’s not right. I guess it got cooked.”

“How’s Grand-père doing?” she asked, trying not to remember what Paul looked like in the hospital. His skin was gray, but changing for the better.

He stared down at the curb. “I go by his house and he’s down in his little yard, fussing at his chickens, throwing feed and talking French, like ‘Mangez les, alors. Ça me coûte vingt-cinq sous.’ I tell myself he’s eighty-five years old and has more strength than I do, and it pisses me off so bad, I feel like going drown myself.” He slid off the hood and turned his back on her. “Later.”

She put a hand over her mouth as she watched him cross the asphalt and step up to the far sidewalk, raising his leg like an old man. She wondered if he would ever get his steps back, his jitterbug timing. When she was again inside the house, she remembered his dance leads, the twirling logic of his arms, and she swayed with the baby in her arms. She had caused Paul to lose more than she’d realized, and she decided it was her job to help him get something back.

*   *   *

That night Matthew woke up crying out from the grasp of a 103-degree fever. She sponged him with water and put him facedown on a cool sheet, patting the pain out of him. Later she called Aunt Nellie, but no one answered, and she remembered that her aunt took the phone off the hook some nights. She walked ten blocks over the town’s broken sidewalks to the little Tiger Island hospital, and the nurse on duty, who had gone to high school with Colette, argued with her, refusing to believe that she couldn’t afford to pay up front. Colette was treated like a transient brought in after a knifing, and when the doctor showed up to see the baby, she heard him down the hall saying, “Okay, let’s see this poor little white child.”

When she woke up, a pattern of window lights was on the plaster wall of her room, so she knew it was early. She put her hand in the crib and found that the baby was no longer feverish. On her way to the kitchen, she saw that the front door was open, and, checking, she found her father in the swing, drinking a glass of milk, his uncombed hair hooking out in silver curls. She looked at his purple feet.

“Hello,” he said, raising his glass.