Joad kicked off her sandals as she entered the house, walking onto a plush carpet, and looked around for a way to the kitchen. Two grimy yellow couches, a large painting of a horse, a terra-cotta sculpture of a young woman’s head on the glass coffee table … “Back and back!” bellowed Colleen from outside. At the far end of the room, a red hallway opened into the dim distance, and Joad followed it. Its walls were hung with framed photographs, hundreds of them, arranged from floor to ceiling higgledy-piggledy, a whole big life. Joad wanted to stop and look at each and every picture, to snoop and snoop. She took in a few images as she walked: Colleen in her sixties laughing with Bill Clinton; Colleen the large-scale American beauty posing on the porch with her two blond sons. One of them was clearly Trevor, his head tilted, hurt smile on his face. Colleen’s husband had been handsome, dark, a little portly, a cigar in his hand as he held forth. Colleen sitting confidently on a desk in a pantsuit, her fair hair sleek, glasses on her head. “Go back and back,” Colleen had said. How far could this hallway go? Joad time-traveled through Trevor’s birth, Chet as a puppy, or rather an earlier version of Chet, a city soiree where a mid-twenties Colleen was an absolute knockout in black silk, standing beside—was that James Baldwin?—and then, a young Colleen, fifteen or so, towheaded, running along the beach, her solid legs a blur as she cantered toward all that promise in the hall. Having come to more or less the beginning, Joad was birthed into the kitchen, where an old white fridge stood humbly in the corner. Joad opened the door to find numerous bottles of white wine, a nest of ineffectually rewrapped cheeses, and a cloudy tub of hummus. She grabbed a bottle and trotted back down the hall, her head down, ignoring the photos.

When she got to the porch, Colleen was grooming a recumbent Chet, raking a brush down the dog’s broad flank, releasing big greasy puffs of white dog hair into the air. The puffs would blow a little distance, then catch themselves on a chair leg or get trapped in a corner. Without looking up, Colleen pointed to a low sideboard.

“Glasses over there.” Joad took a glass, filled it, and refilled Colleen’s. Colleen sat back and took a sip.

“What did you say you brought?”

“Focaccia. Want some?”

“Sure.” Joad brought over the bread. Colleen unwrapped it and tore off a hunk with her teeth.

“Mmm.” Joad looked away, waiting for the ravenous chewing to subside.

“Do you … remember the people who farmed our place before us?”

“The last people to really farm that land were the Leavenworths. But the last brother died and they sold it to—I don’t remember the name. A Catholic family. And then they sold it to Fiona.”

“Fiona?”