Neither of us bothered to correct him. We had become used to it by then. The first time someone had mistaken us for mother and daughter was at a Jockey Club benefit we’d gone to with my father. He had bumped into a former school friend whom he hadn’t seen in years. My father had introduced us—my wife, my daughter—at which the friend had exclaimed with practiced sincerity that surely Vivienne was too young to be my mother, that we must be sisters. Vivienne humored him well enough, chatting merrily while I scowled at the idiot, wanting to set him straight. My father stopped me. Not with anything that he said, but with his face, which was frozen in an embarrassed rictus grin that I hadn’t seen before or since. It was as if he’d never considered the inevitability of such a misunderstanding, and now that it had occurred, he was incapable of locating the words that would carry truth.

Later that night, Vivienne and I crossed paths on the moonlit stairs at home with drinks in our hands.

“Thirsty?” she asked, looking at my glass of water.

I nodded. She held her own glass up in sympathy, though I knew hers wasn’t water. I’d heard their voices earlier, and I could smell the angry sourness on her breath. Then she said that people in general had an odd, lazy compulsion to join up the dots. She claimed, with a wave of her hand, that she really didn’t mind at all if I wanted to set people straight and tell them she wasn’t actually my mother. I replied with a shrug that I really couldn’t be bothered with what other people thought. She accepted my response with a civil nod, and without saying goodnight, turned down the hall to the room where she and my father slept. We never spoke about it again. But that night, as I got back into bed and pulled the covers around me, I thought how, despite what she’d said, telling the truth would probably hurt her feelings just a little.