The old man looked at the back of a hand. “Stroke. Colette brought her mamma a cup of coffee and found her on the floor in the dining room, already gone.” He shook his head once. “You maybe better clean up and get over to her house.”

“Yeah.” He ran both hands through his hair. “But I don’t look forward to this.”

“You don’t think Colette wants to see you?”

Paul stood up. “She’ll probably blame this on me. She’ll probably think that if she’d never married me in the first place, she’d never of left town. You watch. She’ll peg me for her losing these last months with her mama.” He closed his eyes. He imagined her feelings coming at him like radio waves from across town.

His grandfather took another drink of beer. “If she thinks like that, you in trouble, yeah. That girl got a lot of sense, but she still got to grow up.”

“What about me?” He put his hand in the mailbox out of habit.

“If you ain’t growed yet, stick around,” the old man told him.

*   *   *

At three o’clock the town had a near miss from a thunderstorm, and things cooled down under a damp wind. Paul set his teeth together and walked up onto the wide porch at Colette’s parents’ house. Inside were relatives, people with Jeansomme foreheads and noses and Comeaux ears, standing around and talking or eating from little plates of food brought by neighbors. He shook a dozen hands, saw Colette across the living room, and the house closed in on him like a warm fist. He went to her and wondered what he could say.

She looked up, saw him, and said, “I’m glad you wore a tie.”

“I’m sorry. I just got in.”

“Your mother told me you quit your job.” She raised her head in a way that made him angry.

“No. I was fired.”

She made a motion with the corner of her mouth, which suggested it was what she’d expected to hear. “So why’d you come home?”

He looked over to where her father sat on the sofa between two ancient aunts. The old man opened his mouth to say something, pointed, and then his lips closed on the broken thought. “I guess I figured there was more here for me than there was out there, you know?” He looked down. “When are you due?”

“I don’t want to talk about it with you.” Just then a cousin from Napoleonville came up to talk, and Paul stepped back. He looked at his father-in-law, who was speaking to a young boy dressed in the smallest suit Paul had ever seen. The boy stared at his great-uncle, uncomprehending.

Colette’s brother came up with his pallbearer’s boutonniere still pinned to his navy coat. “Paul.” He put out his hand.

“I’m sorry to meet you like this.”