“They were dead,” Bessie replied. “They died in a railroad accident when Miss Hamer was in her twenties and Harold was just a tiny child, before he’d had his first birthday. She raised him all by herself—and pretty well smothered him, too.” She sighed, remembering. “That’s the way Harold saw it, anyway, although to be fair, I don’t suppose anybody could blame her. She was doing her best to take care of a young boy who would’ve run wild, left to his druthers. So she kept him on a short rein, like a rebellious young horse. I used to think maybe he wanted to get married just to get out from under his sister’s thumb.”

“I can understand that,” Liz said. “I got engaged to Reggie just to get away from my mother. Not that I didn’t love him,” she added hastily. “I think we would have been happy together, if he’d come home from France.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have worked for us,” Bessie said, and heard herself saying a truth she had known but had never spoken out loud. “Getting married, I mean. I understand that now. There wasn’t any way Harold could be free of his sister as long as he stayed here in Darling. She would have made both of us miserable, meddling in our marriage. He must have known that, too. So he left. He didn’t ask me to go with him because he knew I couldn’t leave my father. In a way, I suppose, it was a kindness. He didn’t force me to make a choice. He did the choosing himself.”

She stopped, startled. A kindness? Did she really think that? But after all these years, the real truth was that she still didn’t know what to think.

“My gracious, Bessie,” Verna said in surprise. “I never heard a word of any of this.”

“No reason you should,” Bessie replied with a short laugh, “either one of you. It’s not something I wanted to talk about. And it happened a long time ago.”

“But didn’t you think it was really strange that he didn’t try to get in touch with you?” Verna persisted. “Especially since you hadn’t quarreled.”