“If I had married someone else, you wouldn’t be here.”

I was well acquainted with the preoccupation teen-agers have with looks, but I was also aware of how Regina would tune out if I started in on the topic of “other qualities.”

“I wonder what the baby would have looked like,” she said.

I didn’t answer. The baby was not a favorite topic of mine. It only rekindled feelings of resentment for Frank, feelings which would distract me from defending him to her.

“We did heredity in biology last year. It seems weird to me I didn’t get anything from you. It’s all him. If anyone looked at you and me together, they wouldn’t think you were my mother at all.”

What she said was true and I had to think quickly. “Sure they would. You’ve got red highlights in your hair and you’ve got a very good figure. You certainly didn’t get that from your father. In fact, sometimes you remind me of Grandma.”

“Which one?” she said pointedly.

“Grandma Rutledge, of course.”

“How come he hasn’t got any pictures of his family?”

“They were very poor. They probably couldn’t afford a camera.”

“I’ll bet they were all ugly, every last one of them.”

“That’s not true. Your Aunt Vivian—” A twinge of guilt stopped me.

“What about her?”

“She’s a very striking woman and she’s very tall.”

“How come I’ve never seen her? Or any of them?”

“It’s very complicated. It’s the way your father wants it.”

“Everything’s the way he wants it.”

“Never mind that. Your father is not ugly and neither are you. I wish you would get that out of your head.”

“It’s easy for you to say.”

I waited a moment to think out my words. With Regina, they always had to be carefully chosen. “Since we’re on the subject of your father, are you aware of how you’ve been treating him?” She rolled her eyes and put on that “Here we go” expression. “You know, he’d give up the world for you.”

“I don’t want him to give up anything for me,” she said flatly.

“You’ve been shutting him out completely.”

“I don’t like him breathing down my neck.”

“Regina, I wasn’t an only child, but I was an only daughter. My father was very possessive of me too.”

“He’s always watching me. He gives me the creeps.”

“He loves you.”

“I don’t want to be loved like that.”

If she only knew just how much she was my daughter. That desire for independence, the rigid adherence to her own opinions, even the callousness—I had had them until I met Frank.

Her withdrawal from Frank was so complete that it included his friends as well. Bernie and Sylvia and Sylvia’s husband, John, who had lavished attention on her for years, were now dismissed as “a jerk” and “a dog” and “out of it.” She seemed to be shaking all identification with Frank, and although she didn’t move completely into my corner, my company was always preferable to that of her father.