A short story of a 7k words, orig­inal published in Return of the Dinosaurs, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg.

A fossil — a bone — arrives in Peter’s mail. He under­stands what this means: The father from whom he’s been estranged since child­hood has died. He’s never under­stood why his father deserted his family, and attending to his inher­i­tance is one way of attempting to under­stand it.

His wife is worried. His mother is very, very worried. Peter himself is not. He knows what his father did to his family, and he has no inten­tion of ever doing the same thing to his own wife and child.

But what he finds is not what he expected, and he is caught — as his father was caught — by the compelling voice of a past he has never expe­ri­enced until now…