“I must confess to you,” Walter said, “for weeks now, every Sunday I spend the entire Mass staring at your golden hair.” Walter serious, nodding his head, and she wanted to say, “My hair?” But now he was telling her you don’t see blond hair so much, “Naturally blond hair except in Nordic countries and of course Germany.” Honey touched the pillbox sitting on top of her head, still there covering her blond hair’s dark roots, Walter telling her, “I knew a family by the name of Diehl in Munich.”

“D–I–E–H–L?” Honey said. “That’s how my granddaddy spelled our name, but the Immigration people on Ellis Island changed it to D-E-A-L and we’re stuck with it.”

“That’s too bad,” Walter said. “But it remains German because you are. I was a lad of fourteen when my father brought us here on the eve of the Great War. He opened a meat market and made me learn the business.” He turned to Woodward Avenue and looked south toward downtown Detroit, four miles in the distance. “The market I still have is only a few blocks from here.”

“So you’re a butcher,” Honey said. He sure didn’t look like one. She thought he was cute in kind of a mysterious foreign way, like a professor with his accent and little round glasses. “How much is your ground beef?”

“We have a special on chuck this week, three pounds for a dollar. While I still operate the market,” Walter said, “I am looking to buy a meatpacking plant in the vicinity of the Eastern Market, where farmers bring their goods to sell.” He told Honey his mother and father were both buried in Holy Sepulchre and his older sister was an IHM nun, Sister Ludmilla, who taught fourth grade at Blessed Sacrament, the school on Belmont behind the cathedral.

“She is my only relative now in America,” Walter said, and began asking about Honey’s family, the Deals. “Your ancestors are all German?”