The motel had made one attempt at landscaping, a ramshackle wooden walkway arcing over a concrete-bottomed pond. However disgusting it was for Clarissa and me to look into its murk, Teddy considered it Lake Geneva; he wanted to swim, frolic, water ski, and sail in its green sludge. We wouldn’t let him come in contact with the mossy soup, so dense that it left a green ring around the edge of the concrete, but I did make paper boats that Teddy was allowed to throw stones at and sink.

In the morning, Clarissa’s shower woke me and I could time my ablutions to hers thanks to the paper-thin walls. We cleaned our teeth, peed, and washed simultaneously, enabling me to appear outside my door at the same time she appeared outside hers, and by 7 A.M., with Teddy already lulled into a stupor by the motion of the car, we were on the final stretch to Helmut, Texas.

What happened under the pecan tree qualifies as one of those events in life that is as small as an atom but with nuclear implications.

Clarissa and I had checked into a local motel, just a short hop from Granny’s, that practically straddled the Llano River. It was set in a gnarly copse of juniper trees whose branches had woven themselves into a canopy that threw a wide net of shade. We were lucky to have found a low-cost paradise that had a number of natural amusements for Teddy, including nut-finding, water-squatting, and leaf-eating, and it was easy to idle away a few hours in the morning while we laboriously digested our manly Texas breakfasts.

Before lunch, Clarissa drove me to Granny’s. I had no recollection of how to get there, though a few landmarks-the broadside of a white barn, a derelict gas pump, a cattle grate-did jog my memory. But when we left the highway and drove among the pecan groves whose trees overhung the road to the farm, I experienced an unbroken wave of familiarity. The trees grew in height and density as we neared the farmhouse, which was sheltered by a dozen more trees towering 150 feet in the air, protecting it from the coming summer heat. The house was a single-story hacienda, wrapped around a massive pecan tree that stood in the middle of a courtyard. The exterior walls were bleached adobe and the roof-line was studded with wooden vigas. A long porch with mesquite supports, sagging with age, ran the length of the house on three sides, and a horse and goat were tied up near a water trough. The trees overhead were so dense that sunlight only dappled the house even at this moment of high noon. A few rough-hewn benches were situated among the trees. Attached to the house was a ramada woven with climbing plants, at the end of which a tiled Mexican fountain flowed with gurgling water, completing this picture of serenity.

There were three cars parked outside, two were dilapidated agricultural trucks and one a dusty black Mercedes. We pulled up and got out. A man in a tan suit swung open the screen door. He held a slim leather portfolio that indicated he was official. He said hello to us with a relaxed voice and we heard the first southern drawl of the entire trip. We introduced ourselves and when I said I was “Dan, grandson of Granny,” there was a frozen moment followed by, “Oh yes, we’ve been looking for you.”

Clarissa went off to the fountain to show Teddy its delights. I went into the farmhouse with Morton Dean Argus, who turned out to be the lawyer for the estate. He explained he had driven all the way from San Antonio and had stayed here on the farm for the last three days to sort out issues among the few relatives who had arrived in pickup trucks after the news got out. “Y’all arrive a half hour later and I would-of been gone,” he said.

Everything useful in the house had been sacked. Everything personal remained. Antique family photos still hung on the walls, but the microwave oven had been removed. The stove, a 1930 Magic Chef Range, was too ancient to loot, the marauders having no idea of its value to the right aesthete chef. A cedar chest filled with Indian rugs had been mysteriously overlooked. There were the occasional goodies, including period equestrian tack used as wall decor, as well as a small collection of heavy clay curios of sleeping Mexicans, whose original bright colors had patinated to soft pastels.

Morton Argus told me that Granny had been cremated and interred on the property under a tree of her designation. He told me that a one-page will had been read and that certain items-really merchandise-had been distributed to a few workers and relatives. My sister, Ida, had been there, he said, and I felt a pang of guilt that my sequestered lifestyle hadn’t allowed her to contact me more quickly so I could have met her at the house. It was Ida, he said, who coordinated the dispersal of furniture to a small swarm of needy relatives.

Ida was three years younger than me. She’d moved to Dallas, married young, and borne children, and she seemed untouched by the impulses that took me inside myself. “Did my dad show up?” I said. Morton asked me his name. “Jack,” I said. No, he hadn’t.

Accompanied by Morton, I nosed through the house and came into a room piled with cardboard boxes and empty picture frames. An oval mirror leaned precariously against the floor. Four wooden kitchen chairs were alternately inverted and nested on each other.

“Anything you want in here?” asked Morton.

“I’ll look,” I said.

Morton excused himself, saying he had to sort out some papers. I knelt down and browsed through a couple of boxes. At the bottom of one I found a metal container the size of a shoe box. It had a built-in lock but the key was long gone. I thought it would take a screwdriver to bust it open, but I gave it an extra tug and it had enough give to tell me it had only rusted shut. A little prying and the lid popped up. Inside were a bundle of letters, all addressed to Granny, all postmarked in the late ’70s. Two of them had return addresses with the hand-printed initials J.C. They were from my father. I picked up the box, knowing that this would be the only thing I would take from the house.

I found Morton in the living room, which, because of the exterior shade and small windows, was exceedingly dark. He sat in an armchair that had been upholstered with a sun-bleached Indian blanket. He had a handful of papers that he shuffled then spread open and rearranged like a bridge hand.

“Has your sister contacted you?” he said.

“Not that I know of.” I loved my rejoinder, grounded as it was in a fabulous paradoxical matrix, and perfectly e-less.

“So you don’t know?” he said.

“Know what?”

“You and your sister,” he said, “are splitting approximately six hundred and ninety thousand dollars.”

I stayed in the house for another hour, glimpsing faint memories as I moved from one room to another. These were not memories of incidents, but were much more vague and beyond my reach. They were like ghosts who sweep through rooms, are sensed by the clairvoyant, and then are gone.

Clarissa and Teddy had wandered far away from the house and now had wandered back. She appeared at the screen door with a “How’s it goin’?” that expressed an impatience to leave. I said good-bye to Morton, slid an arm around Teddy, and lifted him into his car seat, which made him scream. I put the metal box in the backseat and we drove back to the motel.

We sat in the dining room and I could tell that the trip was starting to wear on Clarissa. Our blistering escape had not solved her problems back home. Earlier I watched her call her sister as the phone battery gave out, and now she seemed in her own world, one that excluded me. Then she laid her hand across her wrist and jumped. “I lost my watch!” she said. She checked around her, then left me with Teddy while she searched the room and car. She returned-no watch-and explained that it had been a gift to herself from herself, and I assumed it had a greater history than she was telling me. Perhaps a reward for a personal accomplishment whose value only she could understand. “What do you think,” she said, “are we ready to head home?”