“How about a drink?” Leo said from behind. The rest of them had drinks. The man and the two women on the sofa looked as if they had had several. Even Vivian was glassy-eyed.

“Where is she?” said Frank.

“Just a minute,” I said. “I have a few things to say and I don’t want Regina to hear them.”

“Then come in and sit down.” Vivian motioned us to another sofa, against the wall nearest us but outside the center circle. Gloria and I sat on it, but Frank sat on the steps. “This is my brother Tom, his wife, Alice, and my brother Jack’s wife, Helen.”

We all nodded. “This is a friend of mine, Gloria Malone.” I turned to Virgil. “What are you doing here?”

“I was waiting for Regina outside the school,” he said sheepishly. “She said I could come.”

“And where is she now?”

“Upstairs, sleeping,” said Vivian.

“Have you ever been here before?” I asked Virgil.

“Here? Why would I have been here?”

“What about the day you were supposed to have gone to Detroit?”

“That’s where we went.”

“Frank says the mileage on your car showed you couldn’t have gone that far.”

“I told you before, he must have gotten the numbers wrong.”

Leo freshened all their drinks at the bar near the staircase. He seemed genuinely amused by me.

“What about those days Regina skipped school with you? Where did you go?”

“We rode around. Out in the country.”

Frank jumped up. “What days? When was she skipping school?”

“Sit down, Frank,” I said.

“When did this happen? I want to know—”

“Sit down.”

“You didn’t tell me?” There was hurt and disbelief in his face, but something else too. Repugnance. It chilled me, but I was not about to be distracted. Nineteen years ago, I had let my emotions snuff out my reasoning and common sense. I had married him and accepted his conditions on faith. Now, as I faced him and Vivian together, there could be no emotions, only hard and brittle logic. Gloria was with me; once again, I could be the rock. If Frank was lying, she and I would take Regina without him.

“Vivian, Frank says there’s an error on his birth certificate.”

“What kind of error?”

“An error in the parenthood.”

“Well”—she chuckled—“he wasn’t adopted. I hope he hasn’t gone so far as to deny us.”

“Then you’re saying there’s no mistake on the certificate?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to see it.”

I blurted it out. “Frank says you’re his mother!”

Her eyes slid from me to Frank. “You told her that?” He didn’t answer. “Well, well, well. What else have you told her?”

“That Virgil is—belongs to you,” I said.

“I see. Anything more?”

“That Regina was your daughter, that your father and he”—I nodded toward Tom—“took advantage of her repeatedly until she couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“And what do you think of such a story?”

“I want to know the truth!”