Angie found herself so completely relaxed that she might have gone to sleep right there with a plate of food on one knee and her glass on the other, but one of the grandsons was walking toward her in a way that brought junior high school socials to mind. He ducked his head and looked back over his shoulder at the men around the grill. When he came to a stop in front of Angie she thought for sure he was going to ask her to dance. He was about sixteen, tall for his age and awkward with it, a scattering of pimples on his forehead but with a bright look about him.

“Miss Angie?” he said. “I’m Markus Holmes, Eunice’s oldest boy?”

His eyes skittered in the direction of the picnic tables and back again. Angie shook the hand he offered and asked him to sit down, a question he seemed to overhear. Then he turned his smile on her, and she could see that he had resolved to ignore his cousins and the teasing that would come his way.

“I was just wondering, will you be shooting digital video or film for your documentary?”

“Digital for the most part,” Angie said. “Some film for texture, but mostly high-definition video. You interested in filmmaking?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

It was going to take some time to get used to the ma’am, but there was no help for it; she might as well object to palmetto bugs and magnolias. And Angie liked the kid right away, in part because he went to such trouble not to brag as he told her about what he had been working on. For his age he had a lot of experience, most of it through the local-access television station.

“Channel twelve, right?” Angie said. “I saw a little of one of the programs last night, political talk.”

“That’s Scoot Sloan’s show,” Markus said. “The Right Side of Ogilvie, it’s called. You should come down to the station sometime, have a look around.”

He peeked at her to see how well she took to southern circumlocution, and he looked so eager and shy all at once that Angie was thoroughly charmed.

She said, “I’d like to see what you’ve done. Maybe you could bring a tape by the media studio this week.”

“I’d like that,” he said, looking her full in the face for the first time.

“Do you want to sit down?” She patted the chair beside her again, but he stepped backward.

“No, thank you, ma’am. There was just one other thing I wanted to ask you about. You know that memory book you put out, the one for people to write in about Miss Zula?”

“At the library,” Angie said.

“Well, what I wanted to tell you was, I’ve got this idea that the book’s not going to do you much good where you’ve put it.”