“Did my parents ever have more children?” I asked, leaning against the cold porcelain tile of the counter. My hands flat against it, I focused for a moment on the sensation—on the fact that there was a sensation—and I compared it to the feeling of finally being close to Dolores.

“No,” he answered, momentarily surprised. “But then I suppose it’s a valid question. How would you know?”

“But then who did she mean?”

He dropped shards of glass from the dustpan into the trash and came around the wide eat-in table to stand across from me.

“Do you know an Emma?” I asked, dabbing at the petroleum jelly I’d applied to my lip to stop the bleeding.

“Not that I recall, no.” He waited for me to explain, his gaze on my lips. “It’s something Dolores said, isn’t it?”

This time it was I who waited, curious to see his intentions clarified. He took a few steps back around the table, and the distance he put between us made me trust him.

“We don’t have a kitten either, and she’s always calling after one.”

“But she did,” I answered quickly, coming around to rest against the same side of the table. “When I was with her. That one’s true.”

His smile was as faint as the light above our heads. When for what seemed the first time since our meeting he looked at something other than me, it lasted only a moment.

“I thought we’d have children by now,” he said, and I couldn’t help but grieve for him. “I didn’t expect that the nanny would be for her.”

The house creaked in reply, or as though under the weight of the women upstairs. After surveying the ceiling, Lyman looked to me and I realized how close we now stood to each other.

“Losing you changed her,” he said, his breath near enough to brush the edge of my nose.

“How could you know?”

“You don’t have to be modest, Elsie.”

He’d heard me. He’d been listening when I told Dolores my name. “We’re none of us to blame. It isn’t your fault she’s turned out this way any more than it’s Dolly’s fault she can’t be more like you.”

I waited to hear what he was innocent of, certain that there was something and that he’d only begun with Dolores and me so that it would not seem like confession.

“I’m not to blame for being uncomfortable at the sight of you both, side by side. I couldn’t know what the old bird would do when I let you come inside alone. I wasn’t ready to see you together, but neither was he.”

I knew he meant Dolores’s father.