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She snorted. “Don’t ‘Ms. Carol’ me like I’m one of your clients. Your mama almost fainted when she saw you.”

He glanced through the screen door into the kitchen where Margaret was rinsing plates. “She didn’t faint.”

“You know what I mean.”

Carol followed his gaze, then lowered her voice. “You picked a hell of a time to show up.”

Daniel turned to her slowly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Carol hesitated.

That, more than anything, confirmed he was asking the right person.

“What do you know?” he said.

“Only what everybody knows.”

“Which is?”

She leaned on the porch rail. “That your mama’s been raising those two babies almost since they were born. That she works herself half to death down at the bus station before sunrise. That she nearly collapsed a few weeks ago and the doctor told her to slow down, which of course she ignored because being stubborn is how your family says grace.”

Daniel went very still.

“Collapsed?”

Carol clicked her tongue. “You didn’t know that either.”

He looked through the screen again at Margaret. Blood pressure pills beside the tea tin. The shake in her hands. The hollows beneath her cheekbones. He had arrived with gift envelopes and expensive shoes and a truck bed full of supplies, feeling generous, capable, almost heroic. Now all of it felt absurd, like showing up to a house fire with a scented candle.

He asked, “Who are the children?”

Carol studied him. “If she hasn’t told you, that’s her business.”

“Ms. Carol.”

“No.”

“Please.”

She sighed the sigh of a woman surrendering not because she had lost, but because she had chosen the larger battlefield.

“I know a young woman showed up here pregnant, years back. Scared half to death. I know your mama took her in. I know two babies came after that. I know the young woman didn’t stay.”

Daniel’s heartbeat became a pulse of sound in his ears.

“What was her name?”

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