“I know, I know . . . damn it. I just wanted you to see that wasn’t any way to be. But you didn’t have to drag it all back up now, did you?”

“I made it clear that stuff was all in the past. And she printed my qualifications, I’ll give her that.”

“God almighty, what a mess. Do you think—”

The front doorbell rings, cutting him off.

“Who the hell could that be?” he asks. “It’s only eight-thirty.”

He walks out of the bedroom, taking the wadded-up newspaper with him.

My thoughts return to Caitlin Masters. Despite her assurances, I was foolish to say anything to her that I didn’t want printed. Maybe she did show me a little leg and lull my usually vigilant defenses. Am I that easy to manipulate?

“Get some clothes on,” my father says from the door, his face grave. “You’ve got visitors.”

“Who? You look almost scared.”

He nods slowly. “I think I am.”

Uncertain what to expect, I hover in the hall outside my mother’s living room. The hushed sibilance of gracious women making polite conversation drifts from the wide doorway. I walk through the door and stop in my tracks. Two black women sit primly on the sofa, delicate Wedgwood cups steaming before them on the coffee table. One is in her eighties, if not older, and dressed in an ensemble the like of which I have not seen since the Sundays I drove past black churches as a teenager. The skirt is purple, the blouse green, the shoes a gleaming patent black. Her hat is a flowered concoction of black straw and varicolored silk. Beneath the hat is a shining black wig, beneath the wig a raisin of a face with watery eyes that glisten amid the wrinkles.

The woman beside her looks thirty years younger and wears a much more subdued outfit, a pleated navy skirt with a periwinkle blouse. She looks up, and her gaze disconcerts me. Most black people I grew up with rarely made direct eye contact, locking their feelings behind a veneer of humility. But this woman’s gaze is unveiled, direct and self-confident.

“You keep a fine house, Mrs. Cage,” the older woman says in a cracked voice. “A fine house.”

“You’re so kind to say so,” my mother replies from a wing chair on the other side of the coffee table. She wears a housecoat and no makeup, yet even in this state radiates a quiet, stately beauty. She turns to me and smiles.

“Son, this is Mrs. Payton.” She gestures toward the elderly woman, then nods at her younger companion. “And this is Mrs. Payton also. They’ve come to thank you for what you said in this morning’s paper.”