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Just turned ten.”
    “And that was in New Orleans.”
    “Oh, no. I was born in the Delta. Moved to New Orleans to be with my mother’s people.” He gave me a look. “When I was ten.” He nodded slowly, and the shadows rose and fell on his sunken cheeks.
    “The Delta. I thought I heard that in your voice.”
    “Ah. You like accents,” he said, as if some suspicion had been confirmed. “The illusion of identity.”
    He never asked me about my own origins. I wouldn’t have told him much; I didn’t know what he wanted to hear. And yet, at the end of every evening, I left feeling that we had somehow been on the brink of connection.
    When I was there, May was usually upstairs doing homework. Sometimes I never saw her at all. But I was aware of her, over our heads, in a bedroom behind a closed door, and I hoped the sound of our voices was comforting to her in that big, empty place.
    It was still stuffed with detritus from the days when a family of six had lived there, and if you’d said they were all about to troop in the door I would’ve believed it. In the mudroom, there were coats on all the hooks, and a row of boots of various sizes on two boot trays, and a pile of sneakers. There were old birthday cards on the mantel, and the refrigerator was covered with magneted postcards and cartoons and outdated team schedules. On the closed top of the baby grand piano, there was the village of silver-framed photos. Percy the golden retriever, his muzzle nearly white, was still extant, along with his dishes and leashes and bones and drippy tennis balls. The house still seemed to hold life.
    Once, though, I was sent to the kitchen for club soda; when I opened the fridge I found, besides the two bottles I’d been sent for, an orange, a jar of pickled cocktail onions, a half-gallon of skim milk, a can of grocery-store ground coffee, and a wedge of moldy Cheddar. Which could not have been the way it was back when there were six mouths to feed, three of them teenaged boys.
    I stood there looking into that sad white expanse and then felt someone behind me. There was May, her head tipped, a wry expression on her face. Here at home she looked older, I thought. Or just more relaxed. “I eat mostly on campus,” she said.
    “Well, thank God for that,” I said.
    “May-May!” It was Preston, a sudden bellow. “Help Charlie find the goddamn fizz!”
    We exchanged a look. “I’ve got it,” I called back, and reached in forone of the bottles, which May promptly took from me. She loosened the cap to test it: no whoosh . She handed me the other, unopened one. “Sorry,” she said, with a general shrug.
    “Don’t be,” I said, and thought I sounded condescending, and hated it, but she’d already turned and left the room.
    AT THE LOWELLS ’, Ram wanted to play chess with me. We set up the board and he went at it hammer and tongs—it was just a game to him, not an intellectual contest. In rapid succession he lost half his pieces. I let him put me in check four or five times before I finally ended it. “Again!” he cried.
    “Fine. Set it up.”
    “I’m going to beat you, Charlie!”
    “I have no doubt,” I said. “If not now, then soon.”
    Win came in and stood smiling, his arms crossed over his chest. “Be careful, bachcha , Charlie is merciless.”
    “Only sometimes.” Which reminded me. “You told Preston Bankhead I was a chess player.”
    “I did,” Win said.
    “Well, so are you.”
    “I thought you’d be better company for him.”
    Ram was arranging the pieces very carefully. I loved his skinny little fingers. “Why does Bankhead rub you the wrong way?” I said.
    “I think the feeling is mutual. Doesn’t mean I don’t have sympathy for the man.”
    “Well, thanks.”
    “Don’t go if you don’t want, Charlie.” There was a mild rebuke in Win’s voice that I was not inclined to unpack. Maybe I’d spoken aloud more than I’d realized about wanting to know Preston Bankhead.
    “Charlie,” Ram said,