I have made my peace with it.”

She dug in her apron pocket and came up with a small frame turned face down, and she wiped the glass on her sleeve before she held it out.

“David’s father.

That was his first carpenter’s square, before the shop had a sign on it.”

The man in the photograph was twenty-five or so, holding the square level against his chest with both hands, chin up, squinting into the sun like it owed him an answer.

“He was up at five every morning for forty years,” Martha said.