“At last!” exclaimed Colleen Prentiss in a shredded voice. She opened one powerful arm as if to hug the air, clinking the ice in her drink. Mounting the steps to the colonnaded porch ahead of Andrew, Joad took the woman in: around seventy, she was beautiful, golden, with a broad, beaming face that exuded privilege and goodwill. Colleen shook both their hands and ushered them onto the porch, emanating an aggressive, spicy scent that made Joad’s throat constrict. “I’ve been dying to meet you two for ages, but Trevor has been keeping you to himself!” she declared. Trevor Prentiss, Colleen’s son, had sold Joad and Andrew a dilapidated 1920s farmhouse on three acres of land for under market value a year earlier. The stubborn colony of raccoons that resided in the long-empty house accounted for the low price, they assumed. They’d chased off the animals, sealed up the gaps in the walls and floorboards, and scrubbed every surface with bleach—but only a week ago, Joad had glanced out the kitchen window after midnight to see three of the wily creatures, hands up on the sill, peering in at her with what she took to be curiosity and longing.

Joad and Andrew took their front-row seats on the grand porch and gaped at the Hudson River Valley sunset, which spread its legs with lurid abandon, revealing electric-blue mountains etched into the rosy sky, Creamsicle-orange clouds floating like torn cotton puffs, and the river glowing fuchsia, the colors changing and intensifying by the instant. Joad’s gaze slipped along the glowing hills, panning left to follow the now-purple current, and landed in a startling close-up of Colleen, two feet away, scrutinizing her greedily.

“What combination of genes could have created that spectacular face?” Colleen wondered aloud.

“Sorry?”

“I’m curious about your ancestry. I’ve been thinking Eskimo, Gypsy, Mongolian…”

“Oh,” said Joad. “I’m Chinese Irish Native American.”

“Tell me how that happened,” said Colleen with an expectant stare.

“Oh, um … My … great-great-grandfather came from Canton Province to work on the railroads in California and … he met my great-great-grandmother, who we think was Chumash. And then … it was kind of a big mix from there on in, but mostly Chinese and—and Irish.”

“A great face,” pronounced Colleen, taking a sip of her drink. And then, turning to Andrew with a perfunctory smile, she asked, “And you?”

“Scotch Irish.”

“I find it fascinating,” said Colleen, turning from Andrew back to Joad, “where people originate. I am Huguenot, and Viking—and Welsh, if pressed.” Just then, Trevor Prentiss emerged from inside the house. His graying blond hair curled around his head in Roman style, and he wore a benevolent expression, his head cocked, hands clasped against his narrow chest, like a middle-aged elf. “And Trevor’s father added Sephardic to that mix,” Colleen concluded.

“Talking bloodlines?” asked Trevor, his voice set high up in the belfry of his nose.