"No," Brendan said, "he was fine about that. 'Whatever works,' he said. It was the art thing--that any other way of life was less worthy. Helping in the community, working with people, he couldn't see that as important. It wouldn't have been, for him, I guess." Brendan shrugged. "I can draw, you know. But I never got off on it." Joe reached out and patted him on the back, not knowing what to say. They went into the house, and Joe packed the drawing with the oil painting. He put the box on the back seat of the rental car and stopped to pick a few strawberries from the patch of everbearing plants by the end of the barn. "I love those strawberry plants," he said to Ann in the kitchen. "October and they're still working." "Your father loved them, too." Joe prowled around the bookshelves and found an Arthur W. Upfield mystery that he hadn't read. "Great stuff," he said later, as they ate a light dinner of soup and salad. "Off to yet another corner of Australia while Napoleon Bonaparte gets his man." "The keen senses of the aboriginal combined with the rational faculties of the white man," Brendan said. _Death of a Lake_ is the one I remember," Ann said. "Year after year, the lake shrinking, the birds, the fish . . . " She shuddered. "More wine, mother?" "Yes, a little." The next day passed quietly. Brendan split and Joe stacked a large pile of firewood. Ann went shopping. They took naps. Brendan and Joe went out for dinner to the "Fisherman's Friend." "Now that's a haddock plate!" Joe said. "Finest kind," Brendan agreed. "La Nouvelle Cuisine has not reached Stonington." They had coffee and mammoth pieces of pie. "Ann seems to be taking it pretty well," Joe said. "She's a trooper," Brendan said. "What was your mother like? You know, I grew up with that drawing. Whenever I saw you, I always felt the similarity." Joe leaned back in his chair, surprised. "Well, she wasn't a trooper. She was talented, I guess." "Do you think of her often?" "Hardly ever--not very good memories." "Like?" Joe sipped coffee. "She was always leaving me places. Once, when I was six, she left me with an old couple in New York. They were very old. They made me stay in a playpen for a week." "A week?" "Yeah. It was torture. I was used to having the run of the block. It was summer. The playpen was by a window where I could see the street; that was good, anyway. I remember the dust floating in the room." "How awful," Brendan said. Memories rushed into Joe's mind as though a lock had been picked. "I used to listen to radio shows every day at five o'clock. Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and his Great Dog, King. On KING! AroofRoofRoof . . . " Joe looked around the dining room and lowered his voice. "I found a dime on the couch one afternoon and showed it to my mother. "'Where did you get that?' she wanted to know. "Found it on the couch.