There would have been reason, the rumors said. Horace Cunningham had been a rough man, had treated his family with the kind of meanness that down-and-out men often used. It was also rumored that Arthur Cunningham, his son, had been the shooter, taking some measure of vengeance on a man who deserved it earlier than God could get to it.

“You think about that,” Boyd had said to her in one of his drinking spells. “My daddy killing my granddaddy.” He had smiled, had let the smile break into a laugh. “My daddy. Hell, he’d jump at his own shadow. He must of been scared to death of that old son of a bitch.”

Whatever the hard times had been, they stayed locked in the brain of the old woman happy with the taste of pancakes, and Eleanor had accepted her role as caretaker. It was a role she was accustomed to. She had her own sorrows. Buried sorrows. Her own bruises coming from a brutal rage that seemed to fester in her husband. She had kept the outbursts and the bruises to herself as much as she could, though her sisters had always seemed to know something was wrong. Her sisters had begged her to leave.

When she thought of it, she imagined herself as a chameleon resting among the leaves of a tree of changing colors.

Beatrice was awake on the morning after the supper with Noah Locke. Was hungry. At breakfast, she asked Eleanor, “Who was that man?”

“What man?” Eleanor asked.

“One who was here last night.”

“You remember him?” Eleanor asked with surprise, not realizing the old woman had been aware of anything, and it made her wonder what else the old woman kept locked behind her watery eyes.

“Some,” Beatrice said with hesitation, as though making a regretful confession.

“He—helped out with some work yesterday,” Eleanor told her, not wanting to speak of the cow, for the presence of the cow had been a pleasure to the old woman.

Beatrice did not reply. She sat, eating, her eyes wandering to the window and the early light.

“Would you like to go outside today?” Eleanor asked. Beatrice nodded. “To the store?” she said.

“If you’d like to do that, we can.”

“We can get some ice cream,” Beatrice said brightly, said as a child would say it.

“That would nice,” Eleanor said. “Maybe you’d like to go see Arthur and Rachel while we’re out.”

A frown came across Beatrice’s face. She seldom saw her son and daughter-in-law and Eleanor believed she knew that her son and daughter-in-law had found great relief in sending the old woman away to live with someone else.

“I want some ice cream,” Beatrice said, suddenly stubborn.

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Eleanor told her.

A moment of silence rested in the kitchen. The old woman held the sweetness of the pancakes and syrup in her mouth. Eleanor took coffee from the cup she had been holding.

“Where did he go?” Beatrice said at last.