"Was Gwen ever here or at the other house?"

Colin watched her face, his own face a remarkable mirror of uncertainty and something else – uneasiness, secrecy, dismay. "I don't know," he said aloud. The consonants bluffed together, like ink on a wet page, his tone conveying a sort of stubborn distrust.

His eyes slid over to me. I thought suddenly of the time in the sixth grade when I first heard the word fuck. One of my classmates told me I should go ask my aunt what it meant. I could sense the trap though I had no idea what it consisted of.

"Tell him it's okay," I said to her. "Tell him it doesn't matter to you."

"Well it certainly does," she snapped.

"Oh come on, Nikki. It's important and what difference does it make after all this time."

She got into a short discussion with him then, just the two of them, signing away like mad – a digital argument. "He doesn't want to talk about it," she said guardedly. "He made a mistake."

I didn't think so and I could feel excitement stir. He was watching us now, trying to get an emotional reading from our interchange.

"I know this sounds weird," I said to her tentatively, "but I wonder if Laurence told him that … that she was his mother."

"Why would he do that?"

I looked at her. "Maybe Colin caught them embracing or something like that."

Nikki's expression was blank for a moment and then she frowned. Colin waited uncertainly, looking from her to me. Nikki signed to him again. He seemed embarrassed now, head bent. She signed again more earnestly. Colin shook his head but the gesture seemed to come out of caution, not ignorance.

Nikki's expression underwent, a change. "I just remembered something," she said. She blinked rapidly, color mounting in her face. "Laurence did come out here. He told me he brought Colin out the weekend I was back east. Greg and Diane stayed at the house with Mrs. Voss. Both had social plans or something, but Laurence said the two of them, he and Colin, came out to the beach to get away for a bit."

"Nice," I said with irony. "At three and a half, none of it would have made sense to him anyway. Let's just assume it's true. Let's assume she was out here –"

"I really don't care to go on with this."

"Just one more," I said. "Just ask him why he called her 'Daddy's mother.' Ask him why the 'Daddy's mother' bit."

She relayed the question to Colin reluctantly but his face brightened with relief. He signed back at once, grabbing his head.

"She had gray hair," she reported to me. "She looked like a grandmother to him when she was here."

I caught a glint of temper in her voice but she recovered herself, apparently for his sake. She tousled his hair affectionately.

"I love you," she said. "It's fine. It's okay."