(I am guilty. I know those people found me guilty, pitied Stephen; and certainly those people I loved, that family, were hurt and found me guilty. And I have no explanations to give them. I accept the guilt, I understand that I have given them grounds for judgement. But it seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that it could have been no other way.)

5

5

Katie can’t understand any of it.

She returns, as she has promised, the morning after her first visit. She looks haggard, sleepless, but determined — apparently she has come to some kind of resolution. I am still drinking tea in the kitchen when she arrives, although it is late morning. I, too, have slept little; the night has been full of memories, and yet so few, only a beginning.

In the midst of the past, I have forgotten she will be back, and the knock startles me. I look around, recognizing where I am and what it means, and I rebel, for a moment, against having it disturbed. But then she knocks again, and of course I must answer.

She is wearing a long light blue skirt and a halter top, carrying a white shawl against a change in the weather. I run my fingers through my hair, the old habit, then remember how she must see the gray and grizzled effect, and try to pat it down again. “May I come in?” she asks.

I stand back to let her by. She looks lovely; I feel awed by her youth, and struck by the knowledge that I had something to do with creating her. There is again the feeling of a bond.

“Tea?” I ask. She is standing by the kitchen table, tentative about whether she is welcome at it. I gesture to the second chair and she sits, folding her hands in front of her on the table. She has very long fingers.

“Please,” she says. I pour two cups, and we sit in silence for a few moments before she breaks it finally. “Do you mind that I’ve come back?”

I wonder now, after the first doubt, do I mind? It comes to me that I am glad to see her, am curious about things that returned to me during the night of remembering. I suppose the curiosity is the first sign that I can be drawn toward a life that is gone. That is the way she sees it, and I should cover it from her, should keep her from knowing that I am interested. But I am unused to dissembling; there is no need for it here, and I have forgotten the ways.