Constance slept peacefully, the evening erased from her mind. Diana, lying next to her, rehearsed the names of her great-nieces and nephews: Christine, Patsy (for her grandmother, of course), Tyler; Ben and Mike, and those two would be older since Laura was older than Mary. David’s first child had been a boy and a cot death when he was only a few months old.

‘I’m afraid of him’, she thought, ‘afraid of what he makes me remember, even of what he wants me to remember.’

Though David had managed to be guided away from his early emotional outburst, the last thing he said before he left was, ‘May I come again?’

Constance had answered, ‘I expect you will.’

‘Am I real to you?’ How could such a question be answered after all these years? At the level he probably meant it, the answer was, no, he was not, a disembodied voice which once a year materialized with a token offering to indicate that, though his wife had ordered Diana and Constance out of the house while he stood silently by, he still maintained this ritual connection.

Diana could be no more real to him, an idea he had, a project for his old age, the last expression of his passive tolerance for the disasters, sins, and peculiarities of this world. David had always been able to cry.

Diana got up quietly to take her mounting anger away before it disturbed Constance’s sleep. What she needed was some hot milk. As she sat at the kitchen table, she wondered if David did the same in his set of rooms in the basement of his house, all those related lives asleep over his head.

How often they had sat together late at night, quiet to keep from rousing their sleeping parents and the two little boys. In those days there was never enough time for David to tell her all that was on his mind. She had been his best and really his only intimate friend. He never seemed to notice that she did little more than listen.

That wasn’t exactly true. Diana’s habit of being dismissively critical of David had been more self-protective than accurate, for there was a time when she trusted him, counted on him for the protection she needed, and she had enjoyed his company. The first betrayal of that relationship hadn’t been his.

‘If I hadn’t left him, we’d still be together, a couple of fussy old maids.’