Rebecca was carrying what her grandmother always called a lazy person’s load, so as not to have to go back downstairs and out to the street to the car again, and she had several heavy plastic grocery bags strung along her left arm, cutting into her wrist a little through her jacket sleeve. She tried to insert her key in the lock with her other hand, which held a bundle of accumulated mail from the entrance hall, when she heard her telephone ring. She was rushing to open the door in time to pick up the phone before it stopped. It might, after all, be George. The keys dropped on the doormat, and Rebecca swore. She put the grocery bags down in the hallway, and some lemons rolled out of one of the bags. She shifted her briefcase into her other hand and retrieved the keys. The phone had stopped ringing.

She turned the key and pushed the door open, then gathered up the lemons and the grocery bags, along with her briefcase, and shoved everything into the apartment. As she closed the door, the phone began ringing again, which meant the caller hadn’t waited to leave voice mail, which increased the likelihood that it was George. Rebecca grabbed the phone off its base while carrying the groceries into the kitchen and shrugging out of her jacket, which she draped on one of the kitchen chairs.

“You got me just coming in, sweetie, dropping everything everywhere,” she said. “I’m glad you called right back—”

“Is this Rebecca Gottesfeld?”

“Sorry? Who’s calling, please?”

“Is this the Rebecca Gottesfeld who is the granddaughter of the late Esther Gottesfeld?”

“Yes, speaking. Who is this?” Rebecca dropped to the couch and put her feet up on the coffee table, with the bundle of mail in her lap, which she began to flip through idly.

“Oh, hello, Rebecca. We haven’t met, but my name is Ruth Zion, and I knew your grandmother. I am so sorry for your loss. I saw the obituary in the newspaper today, and I had no idea that she passed away, until now. Of course no wonder—so much has happened. You have my sincere condolences. What a difficult time this must be for you. You are the only Rebecca Gottesfeld in New Haven so I took my chances, and it turns out that I was right in my assumption that I had located you, though the obituary did contain an error, so for all I knew you didn’t live in New Haven at all.”

“No, you found me. But who are you?”

“As I just said, my name is Ruth Zion, and I am a scholar of feminist studies. I was quite privileged to have known your grandmother so well. She was a remarkable woman. It’s a pity the obituary wasn’t more prominent.”

“She wouldn’t have cared.”

“Surely your grandmother would have wanted the record to be accurate in its depiction of her sister and herself? They were not twins.”