Chapter 13: Half of Newport Has White Hair

Bradford laughed.

It was the same warm laugh he had used on every boat deck of my childhood.

"Honor, please," he said. "Half of Newport has white hair. I've been white since I was forty."

"You went white at forty," my mother said. "The boy was born white."

"Babies come in every color."

"Mother's crown was white the day she was born. So was mine. So was yours."

She did not raise her voice.

"Derrick, bring me the christening photograph from the front hall."

Derrick left the sideboard without a word.

Nobody spoke while he was gone.

The baby had started to cry, and Heidi jiggled him with shaking arms.

Dean stared at the white tuft on the tablecloth, then at the white hair brushed back from Bradford's forehead.

Derrick came back with a silver frame and set it in front of my mother.

She turned it around so the table could see.

It was a baby in a lace gown, held in the arms of a young woman with a white streak at her temple.

On the baby's head, right at the crown, stood a thick tuft of white hair.

"That is your christening," my mother said. "That is you, Bradford."

I looked at the photograph.

I looked at the baby in Heidi's arms.

They could have been the same child.

"A coincidence," Bradford said. His smile had gone thin. "An Auchincloss trait. The boy could belong to any Auchincloss cousin in Rhode Island."

"Which cousin has called Heidi three hundred and six times since January?" I asked.

His eyes came to me and stayed there.

For the first time in my life my uncle looked at me without any warmth at all.

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