A decade has passed. Outside: higher seas, angrier neighbors, a world more chaotic. He rises, heavy with years, and opens wide the door.
She watches a hummingbird skirr from sagebrush to nectar spout, its wings a frenetic blur, like her thirties, forties, fifties.
Grandpa’s descent was complete. He cowered, in a smock, snagging forks and grasping straws, yawping eternally, “Dey heah to take mah guns!”
“The floor is lava!” the boys cheer, leaping on couches. A single smirk; a spell softly spoken. Child-bearing chairs ooze into the eruption.
The boy’s on my porch. Come to rob me, I know. I’m old, alone. The gun bucks in my hand. Blood spatters the newspapers in his fallen bag.
James gazed at the portrait with a paradox of awe and disgust. It was her exactly, years ago, when she was new and not now. He walked away.