The tree trunks hid the sun, and he shivered. “Until I was six months old.”

“Six months.” She said this slowly, as if tasting the words.

He watched her eyes take in the bullet holes, dime-sized punctures that stippled the front wall, splintered the window frames, door frames. “Those are from bullets.”

She kept looking. “I know what they are. Your mother and father, they were killed here. When you were six months old.”

“And my sister and brother.”

She caught her breath. “Did they catch who did this?”

So even she thought first of revenge, of justice. “No. They lived out their lives.”

She turned to him. “That’s not fair.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. What kind of life do you think they had?”

“What?”

“People who would do this, what kind of life do you think they had?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’ve got a long time to think about it. I’m going in.”

“It’s scary.” Suddenly her voice was small.

“You can stay out here, then.” He tied the horse to a chinaball sapling and went up the pulpy steps to the porch. He looked inside, tested the floor, and slid a foot into the dim light, the sweet peppery smell of the cypress lumber making his head spin like a compass needle. The wood of the big room bore the brown-silver tint of the outside, but was less weathered. Nothing remained except a big potbellied stove, its pipe a streak of rust on the floor. Walking past without looking at it, he felt a shudder rise through his shoulders, and he quickly stepped into the kitchen, which held only low, warped cabinets and a broken spindle-back chair lying facedown. The window here was intact and outside of it was the tablet where his mother had washed dishes, as did every Frenchwoman in the region in the days before indoor plumbing. The rear bedroom was an empty box and some of the ceiling boards had come down, showing the joists. He passed through a door into the front bedroom, bare but for the dirt caused by newborn daubers breaking free of their mud. Maybe he was born in this room, saw his first dawn in the window, his first lamp flame, and he stood long and thought about what had happened here.

He heard the girl come into the house and he went to her. She turned and saw the bullet holes glowing like electric lights with the winter glare flowing through. She glanced down at the floor, and he was glad that it was dusty.

“This is where it happened?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t remember anything about them at all?”

He turned his head. “Not one second.”

Then she said something that was unusual for her. “I’m really sorry. It’s awful, isn’t it?”

The statement opened a door that had been locked between them, and he walked to where she was standing next to the stove. “I’d say so.”

“Is this rusty thing all that’s left?”

“Yes.”

Her face brightened. “We could take it back to New Orleans and put it in the backyard. Think how it would look with ivy growing out of the top and hanging down.”

When she reached to open the fire door, he bent over suddenly and pressed both hands against it. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he said, his voice trembling. He kept his hands on the metal as if testing it for warmth. She stepped away, her clear eyes watching him carefully, and after a moment she walked toward the back of the house. His hands still welded in place, he listened to her move through the place and realized that her guess was as good as his as to what life and death had happened inside these plain walls. When she had passed through all the rooms, he heard her push open the back door. Only when he heard her cry “Look!” was he able to move away from the stove.

She was on the back landing pointing up under its overhang. “Look at that. Could you get it down?”

He reached up with both hands and lifted a medium-sized washboard from a galvanized nail. His mouth fell open for a moment.

“You could take that home as a souvenir,” she said. He began walking slowly back inside, turning the washboard in his hands.

He paused by the stove again, aware that what he had in his hand his mother had held a thousand times, that his clothes had been scrubbed clean over its metal ridges, and he didn’t know whether he should smash it against the stove in a weeping rage or take it home and hang it on his kitchen wall to see for the rest of his life and sometimes hold in his lap, as though it contained the phantom touch of his lost family. Hearing Lily come in behind him, he set it down and leaned it against the stove. “Maybe not.”

“Well, can I take it?”

He put a hand on her shoulder and turned her toward the door. “What would you do with that?”

“I just want it.” She darted back around him and tucked the washboard under her arm.

“What for? That thing’ll just keep me looking back.” He glanced past her toward the kitchen, not understanding.

Her blue eyes were reddening and brimful. “I think we should keep it. It doesn’t have to make you think only about the bad things.”

He reached out to her. “Just leave it. I don’t remember any good things.”

She clamped her arm against the washboard and stepped back. “You came here to find something. Here it is. It’s to imagine what happened before those.” She pointed to the bullet holes.

He turned his head up and stared at the shafts of sunlight blazing through the wall. In a small voice, he said to the dust-haunted room, “I found something from before the shooting.”

She walked up and stood close. “We found it,” she corrected, and for a heartbeat she leaned into him.

Outside, they saw that the horse had sidled up to the porch and was scratching his head against a post. Sam swung Lily into the saddle, untied the reins, and got up behind her. “Your turn to drive.” She handed him the washboard, and he stood it up on the saddle between them. “Now your seat’s got a back.”

The horse began to whinny and sidestep away from the house, and she yelled, “I don’t know how to work the reins!”

He rested his chin on the top of her head. “Lily, if anybody can figure it out, you can.”

TIM GAUTREAUX