“Did Mama know?” My lips purse into an O-shape, my eyes narrow. Because despite my new-found benevolence, I don’t serve tea to backstabbing bastards.

“Just put the tea on and we’ll talk,” Peggy pleads.

“I want an answer.”

“Put the tea on.”

“Tea’s made. Because my mother raised me right. ‘Keep the tea on, and don’t be a man-thieving trollop.’ Pretty sure that’s a direct quote from her.” I cross my arms atop my blooming belly and cock my widened hips to one side.

Peggy smiles. I’m gripped by the urge to wipe that antagonistic grin right off her face, but no sooner does the bear hug of rage grip my chest, than a gentle ebb of fuzzy mauves and warm yellows materialize around Peggy. Easy there, Jumpy McConclusionson. There’s more to the story. I uncross my arms and un-cock my hips, freeing my belly from the prison of that posture, that habit. My smirk disintegrates.

“Did Mama know about the two of you?” I soften the tone but not the insistence.

Peggy and Gyaltso look at each other, then back at me. Their heads bob in slow unison.

“She was the only one who knew I had his baby. There’s more, though,” Peggy says. “Is that tea good and strong?”

When Peggy went to Smart Alec Spenser on that October night in 1976 with news of her own pregnancy, she’d already paid a visit to his father to tell him that Alec had knocked her up. Old John Alec knew how bad it would make his family look if people thought his son had two back-to-back bastard babies with two different Fortune sisters. So Peggy agreed to do what my mother would not. Quietly, gratefully, Peggy took the money that John Alec Spenser gave her to pay for her very own trip to the Montreal clinic. But she had a different plan in mind for herself and Smart Alec. They both had to disappear. She, until after that baby was born, and he, for good. It would be for the best.

Because here’s the thing: even though everybody knew that Smart Alec Spenser was the father of Scruffy Effie Fortune’s baby, everybody was wrong. What everybody didn’t know was that Smart Alec Spenser and Scruffy Effie Fortune were never more than friends, and not the kind with bedroom benefits. Smart Alec Spenser took responsibility for Scruffy Effie Fortune’s pregnancy to protect her from shame and scandal. But when Smart Alec accidently fell in love with and knocked up Peggy, things stood to get complicated. So they decided to make it simple again. She went off to the Mainland and had the baby, and he just disappeared.

“Your mother and Alec were never intimate.” Peggy gazes out the window, looking for something to make all of this less awkward. Probably wondering why there’s a ton of onions planted all over the yard.

“Well, in the interest of right speech, there was that one time when Effie and I —”

“Lord thundering Jesus, man, she doesn’t need details!” Peggy snaps her attention back to the robe-wrapped man. “Not right speech if it’s wrong-headed, now is it? The point is, Crow, Alec isn’t your father.”