Arba came down the steps and stood by the fence, watching while her children chattered away and helped Annie dig a hole and set the pipe in it. "How're you, Mrs. Reinhardt?" Arba smiled at Leota pensively. The expression on Arba's face made Leota wonder if the younger woman thought she might sprout horns and breathe fire and smoke.

"Still breathing."

Arba seemed nonplussed. "Well, that's good."

Leota shivered. The cooling air had sunk into her arthritic joints. "I think I'll go inside."

"They aren't bothering you, are they?"

"Who?"

"My children."

"Land sakes, no. Not as long as they're with Annie. They can come through the gate next time."

"What gate?"

Leota walked closer and pointed. "Back there. Of course, you wouldn't know. Can't see it for all those overgrown privet bushes. Should've been cut back ages ago. My husband put the gate in twenty years ago. I had a good friend who lived in your house. She died back in '64. Her children sold the place."

"Has anyone else used the gate since your friend died?"

"No. The next family had a baby and spent most of the time in the house. The couple stayed to themselves. Never saw much of them. Heard 'em, though. They screamed at each other night and day. Even had the police over there once to keep them from killing each other. There've been a dozen families in and out of that house over the years, and most didn't even bother keeping the place up any more than you do. I guess they figured since they were renting, it was the landlord's responsibility, but he never bothered, either. That's why your lawn is all weeds now and the rest of the garden looks the way it does."

Arba's smile had disappeared. "I work, Mrs. Reinhardt. I work very hard. By the time I get home I'm too tired to spend time weeding and cleaning up a yard."

"An hour a day, and you'd feel the better for it. There's something about working with the earth that pours the energy you used up in an office back into you." Leota leaned on the broom for support and looked at Arba squarely. "At least, it did for me. I worked in an office for years. Took a bus and walked." Her joints were beginning to ache more deeply. "And I know you work, Arba Wilson. Your children are always on their own, except on weekends."

Arba's shoulders stiffened. "If they're bothering you, just tell me, Mrs. Reinhardt. I'll make sure they don't do so again."

"Someone could bother them."

Arba stilled, a worried look filling her face. "Has someone been bothering my children?"

"Not that I've noticed, and I've been watching them. They play very nicely by themselves, but they're out front where anyone could see they're not supervised. There are some bad elements around these days."

Arba looked distressed. "I don't have any choice, Mrs. Reinhardt. I wish I did. Every dime I make goes to rent, food, utilities, car expenses, and medical insurance. I don't have anything left over."

"Their father should help with expenses."

"Their father!" Arba gave a hard laugh. "The court's gotta find him first."

"Did he run off?"

"He's probably in L.A. Unless he's in jail again. I'd rather scrape by like I am than have him back in our lives. We don't need his kind of help, Mrs. Reinhardt. He put me in the hospital once and broke Nile's arm because he got in front of the television while his father was watching some sorry football game."

"Oh." No wonder Arba had such strong feelings against the man. Who could blame her? "Got any relatives who could help you?"

"A sister on welfare. I don't want my kids growing up thinking it's all right to sit back and let the government take care of you."

"Good for you. What about a babysitter?"

"Costs too much. I'd need financial assistance, and I don't want to start down that road."

"Then tell them to play in the backyard. They'll be safer there." Leota couldn't take the cold anymore. "Or they could come over sometimes and watch my television. As long as it's not that MTV." She turned and started up the back steps. Each step was agony, her knees aching clear through the joints. She started to open the door and stopped. "By the way, what are their names?"

"Kenya, Tunisha, and Nile."

"Well, for heaven's sake, why on earth did you name them after African countries and a river in Egypt?"

"So they'd be proud of their heritage. That's why."

"You want 'em proud the Africans were selling their own people to slave traders? Some heritages are best laid aside."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me clear enough. My husband went off to war and ended up in Germany where his folks came from. He carried that ugly baggage for the rest of his life. Would've been better for everyone if he'd moved on in his life instead." The old impatience filled her. "When your children are over here on my place, I'm going to call them Carolina, Indiana, and Vermont! They're free, same as the Israelites. And they're Americans. You make them proud of it!" She slammed the screen door behind her.

"That grandma of yours is something," Arba said to Annie. "I haven't figured out what. Is she always like that?"

Annie held the pipe while the children filled in the hole around it. "I don't think she meant to offend you." It was the first time she had heard Grandma say anything about her grandfather that gave her some insight into him. She hoped she could encourage her to talk more.

"Oh, don't you worry about it." Arba laughed. "Old folks just get cantankerous sometimes." She looked toward the house. "I like her."

"So do I." Annie barely got the words out around the sudden constriction in her throat. Was she crying? But why? And why this sense of impending doom?

The children finished pounding down the soil around the pipe. "Is it gonna hold, Annie?" Nile gazed up at her, wide-eyed.

"I think so." She tested it with a gentle push, then a harder one. It held fast. She stood back, looking at the metal sculpture now secured in the flower garden. "Good work, you guys." The children scrambled to their feet and stood back with her.

"Come on home now," Arba said, stepping back from the fence. "Maybe we'll see Anne and her granny in church Sunday."

"Thanks for your help, you three," Annie called after them. Smiling, she gave Arba a wave as she headed for her car. She took out a small overnight bag, two plastic bags of groceries, and a large covered birdcage. She came up the driveway and in the back door. Setting the cage on the kitchen table, she left her overnight case on the floor and put the groceries on the counter. She opened the refrigerator and put away cheese, eggs, hamburger, zucchini, mushrooms, red-jacket potatoes, and two quarts of milk. She left a loaf of bread, a package of bear claws, a tin of sweetened coffee, a small box with twenty bags of sampler teas, and a tin of cocoa on the counter and headed into the living room to check on her grandmother.

She was sitting in her easy chair, a knit afghan over her legs. She looked pale. "Are you all right, Grandma?"

"I'm fine. Just cold."

Annie took one of her hands. It was icy. She rubbed it. "What do you say I fix you some hot chocolate?"

"That would be nice, but I don't have any."

"I brought some." Annie hesitated when she saw her grandmother was shivering. "Why don't I build a fire first?"

"I haven't had a fire in years."

"If you'd rather I didn't . . ."

"Oh, no, I'd love it if you did. I always enjoyed a fire, but it got to be too much trouble setting it up and cleaning out the fireplace all the time. And I ran out of wood. The matches are there on the mantel behind your grandfather's picture."

Annie looked at the old picture. Her grandfather had been a very distinguished-looking man. "He must have had blue eyes." They were so pale in the picture.

"The bluest I'd ever seen. And blond hair. Like gold."

Striking a match, Annie drew aside the screen and lit the yellowing newspaper crumpled beneath cut branches and an old presto log. Everything was so dry, the fire caught quickly. "I don't know anything about him. Mother never said much of anything about him." When her grandmother didn't say anything, Annie decided not to press. "I'll put the water on."

"I made some tuna salad this morning," her grandma called to her. "If you're hungry, it's there on the top shelf of the refrigerator. Help yourself. There's a can of chilled peaches, too."

"Did Corban come by this week?"

"On Wednesday. I imagine he'll show up tomorrow again. He figures he'll get more information out of me when you're around."

Annie laughed. "He thought he was being subtle."

"As a steamroller. Anyone with half a brain could see through that cock-and-bull story. If something happened to me, they'd be looking through my little telephone book under 'in case of emergency' numbers and calling your mother or your uncle. Or you. By the way, did you bring that parrot with you? The one you said had a nervous breakdown?"

"He's in here."

"Is he any better? Let's have a look at him."

"He's eating again." She took the cover off Barnaby's cage and carried him into the living room. "I'm glad you said I could bring him over, Grandma. Susan's totally freaked out about him. She's convinced now that he's eating that he's punishing her with the silent treatment."

"Oh, my, he's a pretty thing."

"He's a rainbow lory."

"Some birds are gregarious. Maybe he'd get better with a mate."

"Raoul paid five hundred dollars for Barnaby, Grandma. At that price, I'm afraid he's destined to be single."

"Five hundred dollars for a bird! That's more than I was ever paid in a month! What did this fellow do for a living? Sell dope?"

Annie laughed. "He's a policeman."

"Well, he should've gotten himself a German shepherd. Would've been cheaper and he could've taken him along on the job. Why don't you put Barnaby on that table by the front window, to the left of the door? There's plenty of light there. Maybe he'll like that."

Annie set the cage down carefully. Barnaby twitched once and remained still. "He used to pace back and forth on his perch and talk all the time. Raoul used to leave the television on day and night to keep Barnaby company."

Her grandmother got up and turned the television on. "Any particular station?"

Annie grinned at the bird. "He doesn't say."

Her grandmother smiled and selected a PBS concert. "That might soothe his ruffled feathers."

Annie went back into the kitchen. She had wondered how her grandmother would take to Barnaby, but she could hear her grandmother talking to him and smiled to herself. She hoped Grandma Leota would keep Barnaby when they offered him. Annie had read that pets added years to a person's life, and she wanted her grandmother around for a long time to come. Who knew? Barnaby might be just what she needed.

She brought the mug of hot chocolate into the living room and set it beside Leota. The fire was crackling. "Are you warming up?"

"Yes, thank you. I shouldn't've stayed outside so long. Work used to keep me warm enough, but standing around leaning on a broom doesn't get the blood moving. Why don't you go and paint that metal sculpture while I take a little nap."

Grandmother Leota's eyes drifted shut as she finished talking, and with a worried glance at her still-white face, Annie headed for the backyard.

When Annie finished, she stood back, admiring the effect. The red, orange, and yellow streamers of metal flowed out of the gray pipe like a starburst of color in the fall garden. Some of the leaves on the fruit trees were beginning to turn as well. A clematis was growing close by, and Annie curled several tendrils around the base of the pipe, thinking how pretty it would look if the vine grew to partially conceal the metal.

She put the cans of spray paint back into the plastic carrier, then set it on the floor just inside the back door. Grandma Leota was asleep, her recliner tipped back just enough to elevate her feet and not interfere with her view of the television set. The concert was over, and actors spoke with English accents. Annie guessed the program to be an Agatha Christie murder mystery. Barnaby was picking at the food in his bowl. He had become very neat since "the incident," as Susan called it. If her grandmother liked Barnaby enough, Annie had decided she would take the stand from the trunk of her car and set it up so the cage top could be removed.

Annie carried her case into the spare bedroom. She hung up the dress she planned to wear to Sunday worship service, then took out her sketch pad and pencils. For the rest of the afternoon, she made studies in black and white. Serenaded by the droning white noise of the television, she drew her grandmother's face as she slept in the big chair. She drew her veined and delicate hands. Later, she made quick sketches of the fireplace and mantel, Barnaby on the table by the window, the lamp on her grandmother's side table with the doily, Bible, and reading glasses.

When her hand began to cramp, Annie set her sketchbook and pencils aside and went into the kitchen to start supper. She found a bowl in one cabinet and seasonings in another. She mixed a meat loaf. After washing her hands, she turned on the oven and searched through the lower cabinets for a baking dish. Pressing the meat loaf into it, she slid it into the oven. Washing two red-jacket potatoes, she put them in a pot of water and set them on the stove to be turned on later. She would slice and steam the zucchini while the potatoes were boiling.

The telephone rang. Annie stepped into the doorway as her grandmother answered. Turning away, she took two plates and silverware out and set the small kitchen table for two.

"Annie!" her grandmother called. "Would you mind if Corban came by for a while this evening?"

"Supper will be ready in an hour, Grandma. There's plenty for one more." She waited a moment and stepped into the doorway. "Did he say yes?"

"He's on his way."

Annie added one more setting to the table, two more potatoes to the pot, and went to join her grandmother in the living room. She sat cross-legged on the couch and set her sketch pad and box of pencils on the side table.

"I didn't intend to sleep so long." Her grandmother moved as though to work the kinks out of her shoulders and back. "I'm not much company for you."

"I enjoy your company, Grandmother, awake or asleep."

Leota lowered the chair so that her feet were on the floor again. She pushed herself up, stood for a moment, then began stepping from one foot to the other.

"Are you all right, Grandma?"

She marched slowly in place. "I'm at that age when I have to get the circulation going before I take any long treks."

"Where are you going?"

"To the bathroom. Then to the bedroom for a sweater."

"I can get your sweater for you."

"I know you can, but I'll get it. If I don't move around a little bit, I'll grow right into this chair and have to be buried in it."

The thought made Annie shudder, and she pushed it away quickly. No point in getting morose. Grandma was going to be around for a long time.

Annie greeted Corban at the door when he arrived. "Good evening, Mrs. Reinhardt," he said formally as he entered the living room.

"I think we've known each other long enough now that you can call me Leota," she said from her chair. "Where's your notepad?"

"I left it in the car." His mouth tipped ruefully. "You seem to clam up when I have it in my hand."

"How does your girlfriend feel about you spending your Friday evening over here with me and my beautiful granddaughter?"

"Grandma-"