For a young woman like Norma MacIver, who had been arrested as a teen-ager in a stolen car and then later as drunk and disorderly, and who had gone into psychotherapy as a condition of parole, the trouble a Joan Petrakis brewed for people would be heart-sickening for the opportunities it wasted. The attempt to ease Karen away from the partnership would be outside her world of ideas. It was not just that she did not understand the deployment of money. In the same situation she would know that Karen would not think much of her—Karen was the kind who stepped up and said hello; she had a natural, admittedly unreasonable aversion to quiet women. But if Norma MacIver could not have Karen as a good friend, she would know that she could have her as an ally. As much as the next woman, Karen enjoyed having people for dinner, chatting on the telephone, meeting downtown for shopping jaunts. As Leland understood them, these things did not require women to be very close. Leland thought that Norma MacIver would not understand Joan Petrakis’ rejection of such offerings, small as they were, for an objective that would bring her no nearer to people. That was the key. Norma MacIver wanted to learn about her late husband not only because he had died, but because she was not sure that she had really known him. Under the same conditions, Karen might have come to the same conclusion. It would not have taken her so long to get going and she would not appear to be suffering as greatly, but the result would be the same. Again, it was a question of ethics.

Mrs. MacIver wanted to tell things in order, as well as she could. She had decided it in the taxi, and Leland had had to agree. For as long as he stayed with this, he wanted to get as many versions of things as he could, and it was more than simply justice that prompted him to hear her out completely. MacIver’s mother and first wife were going to contradict and possibly discredit her understanding of MacIver’s history. If only to establish a place from which to start, Leland wanted to enforce his sympathy with his client’s point of view.