“I have no idea. And I don’t care. He let you walk out the door to me, and that is all I care about. Why do you want to know?”

Her face closed in. He wanted to stop; he didn’t want to bring this subject into the room, into their life, but there was a rising force stronger than he was, and he had to know.

“There were . . . some telegrams I asked him to send that he never sent. I was just curious. I wanted to ask him about them.”

His previous brittle attempts at controlling the subject of Amy caused Eliza to give way; she seemed to actually cave in upon herself as she sat on the edge of the bed. Her dress fell around her like a thick taffeta accordion.

“No.”

“What?”

She didn’t look up. “Twenty-five years later.”

He could not see her face, but he knew from the shake of her shoulders, her back, that she was crying.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Twenty-five years later I thought it was safe. I thought you wouldn’t know . . . or at least if you did know, that you wouldn’t care.”

“What are you talking about?”

“How . . . ?” She looked up with a thin line between her eyebrows hardened as when she was fully concentrating on a puzzle or family problem. “How do you know these specific telegrams were not delivered?”

He saw his mistake now; the casual question had just brought Amy into the room. How could he have believed he could wonder about this, could ask this question about the lawyer and telegrams, without repercussions? But he’d gone this far; he needed to know the answer.

He sat down next to his wife, folded his hand over hers. “Okay. I asked Amy why she never responded to some telegrams I sent her. She said she never got them. I was wondering—curious, that’s all—why she never received them, or why he never sent them.”

“When did you find the time to ask her this?” Eliza pulled her hand away, stood up and stepped aside to glare at him. “At the lake, on some island? Just a casual question over a game of Scrabble, or in the middle of trying to save an old house?” She turned her back to him, then seemed to change her mind. She turned as tears ran through her freshly applied face powder.