Who are your people? probed the ancient woman, one hand on her waspy-thin waistline and the other sweeping a lock of white hair out of her eyes. It was an inquisition, the younger of the two realized, shifting her weight uncomfortably in the sweltering afternoon heat, and swinging a fidgety and irritable toddler to the other hip.

While she sized up the elder, her mind’s eye wandered to the interior of the swank midcentury house on the hilltop just in back of where they now stood, and she surmised how much like a time capsule—of when, the 1960s?—must be its interior, judging from the front elevation. Ashtrays on every end table, she guessed, and matchbooks with gold-embossed lettering, or maybe an elegant lighter with a mother of pearl hood. Busy yellow floral wallpaper for days, even on the light switch plates, and custom curtain valances to match. A rarely used formal living room with thick pile carpeting that would betray bleached-out footprints if you moved the tufted armchairs or sofa (most likely untouched for decades). Crystal decanters and heavy ceramic ginger jars with elaborate scrollwork on the built-ins by the fireplace. Landscape oil paintings in gilded frames, family portraits and children’s silhouettes marching up the stairway. Dark sculpted woodwork in the kitchen, heavy cabinetry stained around the knobs with use, an electric can opener mounted on a wall near the sink, she imagined, and terra cotta tile flooring with black grout. An alcove for the phone book and maybe even a working intercom system. A uniformed housekeeper shelling butter beans at the kitchen table and the television adjusted too loud just outside on the sun porch, where she could hear it. A little yippy dog with painted toenails lounging on a sofa somewhere, she bet.

All these thoughts transpired in an instant.

My people, she wanted to say. My people possibly predate your people. My people set sail for this continent in the last century on a steam liner pointed to the eastern shore and by some miracle survived to carry on the family name. My people set down roots in the foothills, there to farm the impossibly clayey soil that sustained them for generations against all odds, before a branch of them fell out of the family tree and landed in the city you and I call home. My people, by the sweat of their brow, laid the railroad tracks that moved your people from place to place and allowed them to engage in the commerce that built them fortunes and untold generational wealth. This place would not be your place, were it not for my people.

Instead she mumbled a pair of family names, from one and then the other side, and advised the older woman there would be activity in the coming days, contractors and such, and then the moving trucks. Not to be alarmed by people coming and going. She apologized that it was past naptime and took her leave, turning on her heel to walk down the driveway. Rounding the hedgerow that separated the two properties, she glanced back a final time to find the crone still standing there and observing her, now shielding her forehead from the brutal late-day sun with a single hand. Her expression was humorless and calculating.

The young mother was tempted to quip something uncharitable but instead imagined the scene inside this woman’s bedroom not long from now, the dentures soaking in a tumbler on her nightstand and the hospital bed where the four-poster once stood, the machines whirring and chirping, the night nurse reading a trashy magazine while the old woman floated in and out of consciousness. My people will be waiting for you and yours on the other side, she observed silently, and then this scenario inspired her to smile while the toddler began to wail.