“You see, boys, this is what we get for things being as they are,” she declared, as they returned to the harbor. “These patriarchs, these grand poobahs, these tin-pot tyrants ordering everyone about at their whim, doing as they please with their workers and their wives and children. I am no doubt speaking out of turn, but then, I always speak out of turn, since as a woman I am not supposed to speak about anything of consequence. I consider it unconscionable for your father to have taken the actions he has without a single word to your mother, as if you weren’t her children, too, as if she should have no say in the matter, and she down there in Boston, recovering from an operation.…”

She had gotten herself so exercised about their tyrannical father that she had made a slip. The boys knew it by the way she tried to muffle the last word, but they said nothing. It was only when he was alone with her in the tender that Nathaniel got up the nerve to ask how she knew their mother had had an operation, and what kind of operation was it?

Mrs. Williams opened her parasol against the sun’s glare.

“She told me so in her letter, and she asked me to keep it to myself, but I’ve gone and spilled the beans, haven’t I? I believe in candor, therefore, I’ll be candid with you. It’s called a ‘hysterectomy.’ ”

He mouthed the foreign word, tried to get his tongue around it, and his mind as well, for it had an ominous sound.

“Now, now, Nathaniel,” she said, noticing the look on his face. “Doctors have been performing it for, oh, nearly twenty years now. It’s practically routine. You see, your mother had—I shall call it a growth—a growth on her uterus.” Beads of sweat suddenly appeared on her upper lip. “Ah, it appears I am not as comfortable with candor as I wish to be. To remove this growth, the doctors had to—oh, it was benign, it was not a cancer, I assure you. Still, the doctors had to also remove the organ this growth was attached to. It means your mother cannot bear any more children, which is not a tragedy at her age, and her with three fine sons already.”

He looked over his shoulder to make sure his way was clear.

“Father said something about that, about her turning forty this year.”

“Said what about her turning forty?”

“He didn’t finish, but I guess it had something to do with what’s wrong with her.”

“I have told you, there is nothing wrong with her. Not anymore. She wrote to me that she’s been up and about, taking some of Worden’s nerve pills, is all, but we all take those.”

“Mrs. Williams, could we see this letter?”