"Oh! Thank you!" she said, and smiled at him, her cheeks grown suddenly pink. At first glance she could be taken for a young girl, but then people saw the fine lines beginning to show in her skin, and the faded blue of her eyes and the veined, parched, forty-year-old hands with the scratched wedding band looking three sizes too large below one knobby knuckle. She had a ramshackle way of walking and a sharp, merry voice.

"Roof beer, Grandfather!" she sang out. If he didn't hear her, all the rest of the car did.

She put a cup in his hand, and he took a sip. "Ah yes," he said. He liked herby things, root beer and horehound drops and sassafras tea. But when she tore open the cellophane bag and presented him with a Cheez Doodle-a fat orange worm that left crystals on his fingertips-he frowned at it from beneath a tangle of white eyebrows. He had once been a judge. He still gave the impression of judging everything that came his way. "What is this," he said, but that was a verdict, not a question.

"It's a Cheez Doodle, Grandfather, try it and see."

"What's that you say?"

She held out the bag, showing him the lettering on the side. First he replaced the Cheez Doodle and then he wiped his ringers on a handkerchief he took from his pocket. Then he went back to drinking root beer and studying the clipping, which he had laid flat on one narrow, triangular knee. "Theresa," he said. "I never cared for that name."

Justine nodded, chewing.

"I don't like difficult names. I don't like foreignness."

"Perhaps they're Catholic," Justine said.

"How's that?"

"Perhaps they're Catholic."

"I didn't quite hear."

"Catholic!"