“No,” I said. “I’m not trying to be nosy and push my way into your life’s story. I just want to know what you know about Mother. That’s all. How did he betray her? Why didn’t they come back together when she came for him? What else did she do to help change civil rights?”

Birdie sat to face me. “After that summer of ’61, life settled down. Everyone returned to their real lives—to college and families and reality. The summer seemed like a dream to everyone except your mother. I didn’t know it at the time, but she went home plotting how to get back to him. When I told her … some things he’d done, she got in her car and went to find him. I never knew what happened that day, but when she came home, she was different.”

“I know what happened,” I said.

Ms. Birdie stared at me with wide eyes.

“She confronted him about whatever the betrayal was and he admitted it, but told her that whatever it was he did it before he knew he loved her. He professed his true feelings, but then told her that he had to go … and he asked her to wait for him. Then in her brokenness or heartbreak or anger—whatever you want to call it—she slept with Dad.”

“I figured that’s what happened—but you see, this man had already committed to the Peace Corps. He was out of college—older—and didn’t yet want to get a job. He said he couldn’t imagine putting on a suit and walking into a building every day, said it would kill his soul. So off he went.”

“That was his betrayal? That’s what she thought was betrayal?”

“No.” She shook her head. “This boy … this man loved more women than just your mother. She didn’t realize this about him; she didn’t see or know that he …” Birdie paused, closing her eyes. “That he—in your generation’s words—slept around. She thought she was the only one. When I told her, she was shattered in ways I didn’t expect.”

“You told her?”

“Yes …” Birdie released a long sigh, as if this word held more than three letters. “Ellie, please stop. This really is enough. Your mother loved a man who loved her. He betrayed her and then asked her to wait for him, and she didn’t. She chose someone else, and here you are. It is the most common story of man—love and loss. There is nothing new in here for you.”

“But there is—because there was something else. You just said it.”

“Listen, Ellie, when a heart is hurting, it makes its own decisions.”

“I don’t want to be her, though. I don’t want to shut down my heart and live a life of cold perfection.”

“You think she lived with a closed heart?”

“In many ways, yes.”