Wilma’s talk was all of new stores, new restaurants, a crafts exhibit out at the mall (“they have some really beautiful things, Marya, you’d be impressed”) . . . friends she was making by way of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Innisfail General Hospital (“I showed them some clippings about you, they’re dying to meet you”). . . . Marya seemed to be listening, but she was very distracted. She didn’t know whether to be alarmed or amused by her own confusion.

She thought, Already the past is lost territory, it can’t be entered.

While Wilma waited for a traffic light Marya noticed a teenaged girl standing at the curb, black hair spilling down her back, jeans, and ill-fitting sweater, an unsmiling face. She takes herself very seriously, Marya thought. The girl’s gaze moved restlessly onto hers, moved restlessly away. . . . Was this someone she knew? Marya thought for an instant, her heart rising. But the moment passed. She knew no one in Innisfail, after all. And the girl, glancing in Marya’s direction, probably couldn’t have seen her that clearly—the windshield would have distorted her features.

IN THE ROYALTON Café, where they stopped for coffee and croissants—“croissants” in Innisfail!—Wilma talked for a while of the wedding, and her new in-laws, and of how well Joey had turned out: “He’s a really nice guy, you know—the best-natured of the three boys, I always thought.” She asked Marya her opinion of Lee’s wife, who had put on weight since her last baby, and hadn’t ever been—in Wilma’s opinion—“really warm” toward the Knauers; but Marya, deciding to be prudent, said only that she seemed pleasant enough . . . still quite pretty. Wilma hesitated, then said, squinting in her old conspiratorial way, that she hoped Lee wasn’t “cheating” on Brenda; but she’d heard some disturbing rumors. She’d heard. . . .

After this it seemed a natural step for her to bring up, suddenly, the subject of Marya’s “advertisement” in the newspaper, which someone had pointed out to her. And before Marya could reply—she was prepared for this, she’d resolved not to betray embarrassment or guilt—Wilma went on to say, quickly, still in a lowered voice, that she knew where Marya’s mother lived. More or less. “Up in the northern part of the state, New Canaan County,” she said. “But not under any name you’d know—not Knauer or Sanjek. It’s Murchison.”

Marya was staring in disbelief. “Murchison?” she repeated blankly.