“Yes, indeed.” In any small community, including the urban neighborhood o? my own childhood, people gossip mercilessly about Mrs. This’s daughter’s pregnancy and how poor Mrs. That felt when her husband lost all the rent money at craps. I felt momentary compunction for Darraugh and for the angry man in front of me-both of them poor little rich boys in their way.

“I wonder why your father kept the letter? Anyone on your family’s staff might have found it and blackmailed him.”

“Calvin is-was-an incurable pack rat. His study out in New Solway is crammed with papers. I can’t imagine the Lantners being bothered to look through all that crap.”

“And why were you looking at it? A congenital weakness for poking through other people’s desks?” I spoke with deliberate roughness, hoping to goad a further response.

Deepening anger turned Bayard’s blue eyes black. “All that damned talk. We’d had a big house party-the fortieth anniversary of Calvin taking over Bayard Publishing, his pals from the left’s glory days came, even old Armand Pelletier-he stayed with us for three days, until he got into a huge shouting match with Calvin and stormed out. There was one of those daylong parties-people came to ride and have breakfast and stayed on all day until we had dinner for eighty-Renee loved showing off, not her possessions, her genius for organizing.

“All the neighbors from Coverdale Lane showed up, except Olin, of course. Old Mrs. Drummond creaked over in her diamonds. She was ninety-eight and forced everybody to drop anything they were doing if she had any kind of whim. Even Renee danced when Mrs. Drummond banged her drum. Geraldine Graham came, too, although she and Renee didn’t get along. And she didn’t get along that great with Mrs. Drummond, with her mother, come to think of it. And I heard some of the women talking in those delicious breathless voices, `Does he even suspect, do you think? After all, he looks just like his mother, so why would he?”’

His chin jutted out as if he dared me to mock him. “I do look like Renee, so if Calvin isn’t my father, I can’t tell by looking in the mirror. When I was little, I kept believing I’d grow up as tall as he was, and then I was sixteen and stuck at five foot eight. I look like Renee’s father, like his younger twin, there’s not a trace of Bayard in me!

“So while they were having the time of their lives at that party, I went through Calvin’s desk-I knew his study was the one room that people didn’t go to fuck in. Sacred ground, not like even my own bedroom where I found Armand with Peter Felitti’s wife! I was hoping there’d be one word in Calvin’s old diaries about me, one thought that he’d paid attention to my conception or my birth!”

Bayard was panting as though he’d been running hard. “When Trina was born, I made a conscious effort to write it up. It was a big moment in my life, I should think in any father’s life, his first child’s birth, seeing that perfect little creature you made happen. But not Calvin. And I never knew whether it was because he wasn’t my father, or because he was so damned wound up in his own importance that I didn’t count for crap. Everyone worshiped him-you yourself do. Well, I wanted a father, not a god who expected to be on that pedestal.”