He would explain to her! But: Would she believe it true? That, if there was lust, it had been only the product of his grief? (Perhaps, perhaps it was a primal instinct, in the face of death: to create, without even knowing the creation is desired! Without rationally desiring the creation at all!) And she had been so distant, had offered him no comfort at all. Surely she would recollect and acknowledge her own complicity in matters?

I sent her away, Wilma, he imagined telling his wife. She would forgive him! Such a long ago, isolated transgression. I sent her away and never even thought of her again!

That wasn’t true, he realized, taking another drink.

He had, in fact, thought of the woman often, the first years after she had gone, wondering if what she had told him was true. Or if her sob story had been only a clever plot. Maybe she had known he was done with her; clearly, she had figured out how to get some of his money. People were always trying to get his money. He had finally convinced himself that she was a swindler, and he had been taken—seduced and taken advantage of in his grief. He had done nothing wrong, had been fortunate to survive that whole ugly patch of his life, in fact. He was not dishonorable, he had decided. It was she who was the scoundrel, taking advantage of him—a good family man—that way.

After a few years had passed, he had not thought of her much at all, only rarely, when a slant of the sun across the ledger open on his desk might remind him of a long-ago afternoon, and he would shudder with pleasure and regret.

But then: Nick. Nick Overby. One look at the boy (the man—he was nearly twenty-four years old by the time John first laid eyes on him, in 1943) and John knew.

You see, Wilma, I didn’t know. For the longest time, honestly, I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t know that I had a son!

Chapter 66

FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF PINE RAPIDS
101 W. First Street, Pine Rapids
October 1918