He was happy, laughing, full of joy and love. I could not have hoped for more, and I knew he would not have been that way if Stephen had not stepped in. I was grateful to Stephen, too, because I could see that I, also, might not have survived without his strength.

(Over coffee, after an almost silent lunch, while I remember, I ask Katie about Elliott. He will be twenty now, a man. I can see by her face that she isn’t fond of him; it wrinkles in quick distaste before she catches herself and tries to speak of him objectively. She seems to choose her words carefully, whether to be kind to him or to spare me from what she thinks I will feel as guilt, I don’t know.

(She says he seems — bitter. Cynical, she says, in a way that makes him need to win. She starts again, says she hasn’t explained that well; she meant to say that he doesn’t seem concerned with people, that he has no love for anyone, not even for himself; that it is as if he sees living as a race for the top and security. He is at university, taking a course in business administration, his marks are high and he talks with his father about things he is learning and new ways of running businesses. She says she asked him once why he was interested in business, what he wanted from it, and he told her money, enough money so that he would never have to worry about anything, so that he would be secure. He didn’t ever want to feel insecure, he wanted there to be nothing that he couldn’t have. “It’s strange,” she says thoughtfully, “that with all that’s happened, he’s decided that everything he wants can be bought, if only he has enough money. He has such an odd sense of what security is, when he of all people should know.” She stops, looks at me shyly, aware again that she may be hurting me, but I tell her to go on.

(“It’s just,” she says, “that he seemed to miss you the most of all of us. He used to yell a lot, I remember that, but he never said anything. Once after you’d gone” — another glance to see if she should continue — “I went into his bedroom to borrow something, a catcher’s mitt or something, and I found him crying. He was so angry that I’d seen him, he hit me. I know he was crying about you, or something somebody’d said about you, but he would never talk about it. Daddy tried a couple of times to talk to both of us, to see how we were taking it, because I guess neither of us really showed what we were feeling. I remember him saying it wasn’t our fault, it had nothing to do with us — you said that too, didn’t you?” — she looks at me with surprise, as if she is just now considering that it might be true. “We asked him why, then, and he said he didn’t know, but he knew it wasn’t Elliott or me. I’ve talked to Daddy about it sometimes, but Elliott wouldn’t. He’d listen to Daddy and then he’d walk out of the room, but he wouldn’t say anything. Just that one time crying.