“That’s what I don’t understand. If you wanted to find Martha you could have done it years ago. She’s not been in hiding. It took me no time at all.”

Gretchen shook her head at Jean’s simplicity.

“It wasn’t finding her that was the problem. It was proving myself. And you did that for me.”

“Oh?”

Through a mist of incomprehension, a distant gleam of light.

“When I found out I was going to have a baby I went to see her in Chatham at her parents’.” I thought of the baby as ours—it had come to me while we were in St. Cecilia’s together. I thought she was the one person who would understand. But she wouldn’t believe me. She thought I had been with a man and nothing I said would persuade her.

“We had a terrible row. I said I would prove my innocence one day and she would have to kneel at my feet and apologize. Then she told me to get out and shut the door on me, and I never heard from her again until this summer, when you went to visit her and told her you believed my story.”

“So all this was for her?” Jean said.

“When I saw that article in your newspaper it seemed to call out to me. I thought if you could prove I was telling the truth, my picture might be in the paper and Martha would see it and feel sorry for all the things she said.”

“I see.”

“It hadn’t occurred to me that I might see her again. I assumed she would have forgotten me and found someone new. I just wanted her to know the truth. That was all.”

“And did she?”

“Did she what?”

“Kneel at your feet and apologize.”

Gretchen laughed, embarrassed. “Well, not exactly. Martha’s not really the kneeling kind.”

I bet she isn’t, thought Jean.

“But she believes me, and that’s what matters.”

“And do you think you’ll be happy here? And Margaret?”

Jean cast a disparaging eye around the room. Even Gretchen’s efforts to make the place more homely could not disguise its seediness.

“I know it’s rather crowded and messy, but that’s because Martha works so hard. But I can help her to make it nice. And if I’m happy, Margaret will be happy. I’ll explain it to her. She and her friend Lizzie are inseparable. I’ll explain that it’s the same for Martha and me—she is my best friend and we have to be together. She’ll understand.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It is—why can’t it be? I love Martha and I love Margaret, but I love Howard too, and even you, Jean. Especially you, because you brought Martha back to me.”

Jean received this declaration with a stony face.

“I’ve trusted you and defended you against people who assumed you were a liar or a fantasist. And all this time you were deceiving me.”

“I wasn’t!” Gretchen’s voice was shrill with protest. “Everything I told you about Margaret’s birth is true. I never lied about that.”