Most told the same stories. Stories she remembered of the world and how it was. Time to time a bit of something would sail out of the blue, a memory she’d forgotten she had, like television, and the silly things she used to watch (its flickering blue-green glow and her daddy’s voice: Ida, turn that damn thing off, don’t you know it rots your brain?); or something would set her off, the way a ray of sunshine drizzled over a leaf or a breeze with a certain smell in its currents, and the feelings would start to move through her, ghosts of the past. A day in a park in autumn and a fountain billowing water and the way the afternoon light seemed to catch in its spray, like a huge sparkling flower; her friend Sharise, the girl from down the corner, sitting beside her on a step to show her a tooth she’d lost, holding it with its bloody stump in her palm for Auntie to see. (Ain’t no such thing as the tooth fairy, I know it, but she always brings me a dollar.) Her mama folding laundry in the kitchen, wearing her favorite summer dress of pale green, and the puff of scent from the towel she was snapping and folding against her chest. When this happened, Auntie knew it would be a good night of writing, memories opening into other memories, like a hall of doors her mind could walk down, keeping her busy till the morning sun was rising in the windows.

But not tonight, thought Auntie, dipping the nib of her pen into the cup of ink and smoothing the page flat beneath her hand. Tonight was not a night for these old things. It was Peter she meant to write on. She expected he’d be along directly, this boy with the stars inside him.

Things came to her in their way. She supposed it was because she’d lived so long, like she was a book herself and the book was made of years. She remembered the night Prudence Jaxon had appeared at her door. The woman was sick with the cancer, well on her way, much before her time. Standing there in Auntie’s door with the box pressed to her chest, so brittle and thin it was like she could blow away in the wind. Auntie had seen it so many times in her life, this bad thing in the bones, and there was never any right thing to do except to listen and do like the person asked, and that was what Auntie did for Prudence Jaxon that night. She took the box and kept it safe, and it wasn’t but a month before Prudence Jaxon was dead.

He has to come to it on his own. Those were the words Prudence had said to Auntie, true words; for it was the way of all things. The things of your life arrived in their own time, like a train you had to catch. Sometimes this was easy, all you had to do was step onto it, the train was plush and comfortable and full of people smiling at you in a hush, and a conductor who punched your ticket and tousled your head with his big hand, saying, Ain’t you pretty, ain’t you the prettiest girl now, lucky lady taking a big train trip with your daddy, while you sank into the dreamy softness of your seat and sipped ginger ale from a can and watched the world float in magical silence past your window, the tall buildings of the city in the crisp autumn light and then the backs of the houses with laundry flapping and a crossing with gates where a boy was waving from his bicycle, and then the woods and fields and a single cow eating grass.

But Peter, she thought; it wasn’t the train but Peter she had meant to write on. (Only where had they been going? Auntie wondered. Where had they taken a train to that one time, the two of them together, she and her daddy, Monroe Jaxon? They had been going to visit her gramma and cousins, Auntie remembered, in a place he called Downsouth.) Peter, and the train. Because sometimes it was one way, easy, and sometimes it was the other, not easy; the things of your life roared down to you and it was all you could do to grab hold and hang on. Your old life ended and the train took you away to another, and the next thing you knew you were standing in the dust with helicopters and soldiers all around, and all you had to remember folks by was the picture you found in the pocket of your coat, the one your mama, who you would never see again in all the days of your life, had slipped in there when she’d hugged you at the door.

By the time Auntie heard the knock, the screen opening and slapping as the person who’d come calling let themselves in, she’d almost stopped her stupid old crying. She’d sworn to herself she wouldn’t do it anymore. Ida, she’d said to herself, no more crying over things you can’t do nothing about. But here she was, all these years gone by, and still she could work herself into such a state whenever she thought about her mama, tucking that picture in her pocket, knowing that by the time Ida found it, the two of them would be dead.

“Auntie?”

She’d expected it would be Peter, come with his questions about the girl, but it wasn’t. She didn’t recognize the face, floating in the fog of her vision. A squished-up narrow man’s face, like he’d gotten it jammed in a door.

“It’s Jimmy, Auntie. Jimmy Molyneau.”

Jimmy Molyneau? That didn’t seem right. Wasn’t Jimmy Molyneau dead?

“Auntie, you’re crying.”

“Course I’m crying. Got something in my eye is all.”

He slid into the chair across from her. Now that she had found the right pair of glasses from the lanyards around her neck, she saw that he was, as he claimed, a Molyneau. That nose: it was a Molyneau nose.

“What you want then? You come about the Walker?”

“You know about her, Auntie?”

“Runner came by this morning. Said they found a girl.”

She couldn’t say for sure what all he wanted. There was something sad about him, defeated seeming. Usually Auntie would have welcomed a bit of company, but as the silence continued, this strange, sullen man she only vaguely recalled sitting across from her with a hangdog look on his face, she began to feel impatient. Folks shouldn’t just come barging into a place with nothing on their minds.

“I don’t really know why I came by. There was something I think I was supposed to tell you.” He sighed heavily, rubbing a hand over his face. “I really should be on the Wall, you know.”

“You say so.”

“Yeah, well. That’s where the First Captain should be, right? On the Wall?” He wasn’t looking at her; he was looking at his hands. He shook his head in a way that seemed like maybe the Wall was the last place on earth he wanted to be. “It’s something, huh? Me, First Captain.”

Auntie had nothing to say to that. Whatever was on this man’s mind, it had nothing to do with her. There were times when you couldn’t fix what was broken with words, and this looked like one of those times.

“You think I could have a cup of tea, Auntie?”

“You want, I make you one.”

“If it’s no trouble.”

It was, but there seemed no escaping it. She rose and put the kettle on to boil. All the while the man, Jimmy Molyneau, sat silently at the table, looking at his hands. When the water began to thrum in its kettle she poured it through the strainer into a pair of cups and carried it back.

“Careful. It hot now.”

He took a cautious sip. He seemed to have lost all interest in talking. Which was fine by her, all things considered. Folks came in time to time to talk about a problem, private things, probably thinking since she lived alone like she did and saw almost no one that she’d have nobody to tell. Usually it was women, come to talk about their husbands, but not always. Maybe this Jimmy Molyneau had a problem with his wife.

“You know what people say about your tea, Auntie?” He was frowning into his cup, like the answer he was looking for might be floating in there.

“What’s that now?”

“That it’s the reason you’ve lived so long.”

More minutes passed, a weighty silence pressing down. At last he took a final sip of tea, grimacing at the taste, and returned it to the table.