About this story
You play Rena Walden. John crossed the colour line and practises law in another state under another name, and he has come back to offer you the same door — school, society, a future closed to you here — on the condition that nobody learns whose daughter you are. Two steamer tickets lie on the table, passenger line blank.
Who you’ll meet
The brother home after ten years — a town lawyer who practises under a name his birthplace does not know — is the figure the story turns on, with his mother above him at the porch rail of the house she owns, neither of them yet across the three feet of step between them.
How it opens
Spring heat had settled over Patesville when a stranger paused across Front Street.
You left the shop with a parcel and felt his attention follow toward the old quarter.
John WarwickRena, wait. I should not have let you reach the gate first.
John, Mother has imagined this moment longer than I have.
John WarwickThen let me enter as her son before the town decides who arrived.
Choose
Come through the gate and explain the years inside.
Tell me first whether John Walden still belongs to you.