Jean blinked. A film of moisture seeped into her piercing blue eyes. “When you were very young, in your early teens, I think. She left you and your father for a few weeks. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” Amy answered.

“She was with me,” Jean said.

I could see Amy’s face pale.

“When we knew she was dying, I told her I would find you, and tell you,” Jean added evenly.

“Tell me?” Amy said quizzically.

Jean paused. Her body became proudly, defiantly erect. “Your mother and I were lovers, Amy.”

Amy slumped, but her eyes did not leave Jean Archer’s face. I reached for her hand and held it. Her grip on my fingers was like a voice holding a scream.

“I’m sorry to shock you,” Jean said calmly. “I believe in truth and the truth has been hidden long enough.” She looked at me. “This man, he is your lover, isn’t he?”

Amy did not respond and I did not respond.

Jean turned her eyes back to Amy. “I know about him. Your mother talked about him the summer that you met him and then again before she died. She remembered that she was afraid of him, afraid of how he could hurt you because you were so different. She was thinking of us, of course. How much hurt our relationship would cause if anyone knew.” She paused and inhaled. “I disagreed with her. I disagreed, Amy, because I loved her as much as you love this man, and we were as different as people could be. But I knew that I could not live without her and she knew she could not live without me, no matter how hard either of us tried to stop it.”

Amy whispered the question: “Does my father know?”

“Yes,” Jean answered. “That was the reason for the divorce. Someone who knew about us told him.”

“But—”

“He never said anything to you. Yes, I know. Your father is a very dignified man, a wonderful man. I have always hurt for him, but I could not stop loving her.”

“Have you ever spoken to him?” Amy asked.

Jean nodded. “A few times. When Evelyn—your mother—died, he called me. He asked that I not attend the funeral. He was very kind about it and I understood.”

Amy pulled her hand from mine and lifted the glass of cognac and held it and gazed thoughtfully at the rim of the glass. After a moment she said, “Tell me about it.”

“Are you sure?” Jean asked.

“Yes.”

The story that Jean Archer revealed agreed with Amy’s suspicions: her mother had met Jean in New York at the fund-raiser for displaced Jews. Their affair had begun immediately and had continued—with lapses created by Jean’s famous anger and occasional infidelities, and by Evelyn Lourie’s seizures of guilt—until Evelyn’s death. It was the reason Jean had purchased a house in the Cat-skills: to be near Evelyn.