If Maggie registered the sarcasm in Alice’s voice, she didn’t show it. “I called Phil. Told him I was going to have a baby. He immediately proposed. I dropped out of Yale. Not that dropped out was the term I used. A voluntary leave of absence, I believe, is what I went with—less permanent-sounding—but even at the time I knew it was for good. Get off the grad school train, it’s hard to get back on. I married Phil and moved into his one-bedroom apartment in Medford. He was beginning to get sideman work in Boston and Cambridge, I earned extra cash waitressing at a bar in Beacon Hill, and our life just started to take shape.”

“You didn’t tell Richard you were pregnant?”

“Not until years later. As you grew up, you looked more and more like him. That blond hair—his was as blond as yours when he was young—the shape of your eyes, even certain inflections in your speech, ways of standing. And the mouth, my goodness, it’s his, identical down to the last contour, though fuller, of course. You were his. When you were around fourteen, I contacted him. It was just to tell him about you, show him pictures. I asked him if he’d be willing to take a paternity test. Not because I wanted anything from him, money or any of that, but just to know. He did, happily. And the answer was what we expected it would be, what we hoped it would be. Seeing each other again, it was like no time at all had passed. We were as in love as ever, more.” Maggie’s eyes went misty, lost in the past, lost in memories.

“Hey,” Alice said, getting in Maggie’s face. “Earth to mom.”

Maggie blinked, returned to the present. Focusing her gaze on Alice, she said, “And the rest you know. It’s what I told you a couple days ago in my bedroom.”

“Did Martha know about you two, that you’d resumed your affair?”

“No. Though I suspect she knew he was seeing someone. She watched him so closely,” Maggie said, allowing a note of contempt to enter her voice. “I suppose that’s because she never really had him.”

“Then how did Camilla find out?”

A vertical line appeared between Maggie’s brows. “About me and Richard? I don’t think she ever did.” Thinking about it, shrugging. “Maybe after Martha died? You’d have to ask your dad.”

Alice flinched.

Maggie, not noticing, added, “He and I were steering clear of each other during that period for obvious reasons.”

Testing Maggie, watching her face for any telltale signs of deception, Alice said, “So, as far as you know, Camilla wasn’t aware of you two, that there even was a you two.”

“As far as I know, no.”