Anyhow, so it went. Running around that sandy lawn, with the Atlantic breakers rumbling in the background, I worked as hard as I could while the boys barely broke a sweat, and it was with relief that I welcomed the next milestone in the day, which was Dan’s arrival home from work.

“Hey, boys.” He left his briefcase at the back door of the house and came bounding out onto the lawn to join in the Frisbee game. “George! How’s the mother ship?”

“England swings, Dan.”

He asked about my flight and my hotel, and I was gratified that Michael started telling him about my robot kit. We played for a while. Then we took a walk along the beach—sandy and empty, a private stretch reserved for the estate of which this house was a part.

As the boys ran ahead, still impossibly full of energy, Dan and I walked together. Dan Bazalget was a big man, built like a rugby player. I knew he had played football at college, thirty years before, and his bulk seemed too large for his short-sleeved white shirt. His face was broad, his eyes small. He was bald, and had shaved the remnant fringe of his hair, so that his head gleamed like a cannonball.

Dan was good at conversation. He asked me about the aftermath of Dad’s death, and unlike my sister drew me out a little about the state of my life, my work. But there was always an odd reserve about him, his deep brown eyes unreadable. He would look at me and smile, ostensibly generous, neither judging nor caring. To him I was surely just an appendage of his wife’s past, neither welcome nor unwelcome in his life, just there.

As the sun began its journey down the western sky, we returned home for dinner, the boys running ahead, still whooping, hollering, and fighting.

The meal was strained. The kids picked up on the tension and were subdued. Gina was polite enough during the meal, and her gentle chiding of her children for lapses in manners and so forth was as calm and efficient as ever. But her smiles were steel and fooled nobody.

Before the dessert she went to the kitchen, and I joined her, ostensibly to stack dishes and help make coffee.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

“For springing that on you about Rosa. It wasn’t fair.”

“No, it wasn’t.” She loaded her dishwasher with as much aggression as her expensive crockery would allow her.

“But I know she exists, Gina. Or at least existed.” I told her about the photograph.

She sighed and faced me. “And now you’re asking me.”

“You must know. You must have been—what, twelve, thirteen? You saw her born, growing up—”

“I don’t want to think about this.”