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killed their relationship—Grant was a comforting presence at times of crisis.
    â€œThat was a stunner,” his rich, calm voice said.
    â€œYes, it was.”
    â€œAnd your first thought was: I should have known.”
    â€œYes, it was. You know me so well. Not put into words, but . . . Why on earth didn’t she tell me? Just an off-the-cuff remark. ‘I tried it once, but it wasn’t for me’—that sort of thing.”
    â€œPerhaps she looked back on it with distaste, even shame.”
    â€œMy mother was never one for shame—not for wallowing in it, anyway. Pick up your luggage, learn from your mistake and pass on—that was more her line.”
    â€œBut if she was pressured into it—the sex—and found it unpleasant?”
    â€œPressured? My mother? Anyway, I didn’t get the impression from the letter that anything like that happened.It was more that she was pressured away from her natural bent.”
    â€œWell, that may be your interpretation, but it wouldn’t be how Jean viewed it, would it? If the affair was one of the emotional high spots of her life? She wouldn’t want to acknowledge that your mother had had to be pressured.”
    â€œIt’s so difficult at this distance of time. And Mother never having touched on the subject so far as I can remember.”
    There was silence at the other end.
    â€œEve, I’m not sure this is getting us anywhere.”
    â€œNo, it’s not. But what should I do, Grant?”
    â€œYou know what I think of your questions like that.”
    â€œThat they’re preparatory to my doing exactly what I’ve already decided to do.”
    â€œPrecisely!”
    â€œBut in this case I haven’t decided anything. I just don’t know what to do.”
    â€œMaybe. Still, I don’t think you’ll like what I would recommend. That is that you do precisely nothing.”
    â€œI thought it would be that.”
    â€œAfter all, why should you do anything? Your dead mother had a lesbian affair in the past. So what? She never told you. Tough, but that was her decision, one she had a right to make. So why can’t you just move on?”
    Eve thought.
    â€œBut what about the reference to my father?”
    â€œWas that John? I don’t think I ever heard his name. You didn’t talk about him.”
    â€œYes, his name was John McNabb. I never knew him. Mother didn’t talk about him.”
    â€œYou never asked her?”
    â€œI expect I did. But not very urgently, obviously. You blame me for that, don’t you?”
    â€œYou know psychiatrists don’t much go in for blame. But it does surprise me.”
    â€œMother was obviously all I wanted, and I didn’t need to imagine a benevolent, wise, lost father.”
    Eve was silent for a moment before asking her next question.
    â€œDid you get the feeling that the pair of them, Jean and May, had done or tried to do something serious, something perhaps to stymie John and his claims on my mother?”
    â€œTo tell you the truth, I didn’t think much at all about that sentence. Probably I would have if I’d known your father’s name . . . Yes, maybe you’re right. What do you know about your father? All you’ve told me is that he is dead.”
    â€œYes—he died when I was about three or four.”
    â€œAny memories of him in the house?”
    â€œHardly anything, and I don’t remember anything that was there earlier on but is now gone. That I do find odd. Mother was not sentimental, but she wasn’t ruthless either. Clearing him away like that seems out of character.”
    â€œYou actually remember asking her about him?”
    â€œYes, occasionally. Once I remember asking about him and I was shown a photograph. That obviously satisfied me at the time. Maybe her coldness on the subject was her way of shutting me up.”
    â€œSeems to me there must be things