“Nothing. She said the story was yours, which is why she set this up. I do know you had a son and you ended up raising his child.”

“Rain is the good part. She’s the love of my life. At the time we took custody, I was forty-four years old, way past the point of parenting a newborn, but there she was. The birth itself was hard and Shelly ended up having a C-section. She had absolutely no interest in mothering the child. Rain was a fussy baby and didn’t nurse well. I suspect Shelly was suffering from postpartum depression. I wasn’t entirely unsympathetic, but I was seriously concerned she’d harm the child. My worries were pointless, as it turned out. She and Greg and the boy vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving Rain behind.”

“How old was she?”

“Five days. After the initial shock wore off, we realized how totally blessed we were. I still laugh when I think about all those PTA meetings. Which I ran, by the way. All the other moms were in their twenties. I’d been chairing committees for years and I couldn’t help myself. They’d start floundering and I’d take over. That was another reason we were so close to Kip and Annabelle. They had four kids underfoot and suddenly we had one, too.” She smiled. “Sorry to run on like this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “How long was it before you saw Greg and Shelly again?”

“Four years. June of 1967. I thought they were gone for good. I should have known better.”

“Why did they come back?”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t for love of Rain or the two of us. Patrick’s father had left forty thousand dollars in a trust fund for Greg. He wasn’t entitled to the money until he turned thirty, but he wanted it right then. Patrick and I refused to knuckle under to his demands. He and Shelly were furious, and I was terrified they’d retaliate by taking Rain.”

“Why was Greg so insistent on the money?”

“I couldn’t see the urgency myself. They told us they wanted to buy a farm so they could establish a commune. Their claim was they’d paid a thousand dollars down and needed the balance by the end of the month. Patrick asked to see the contract, but Greg said there wasn’t one; it was a gentlemen’s agreement. Patrick thought it was hogwash, and so did I.”

“Had they lived in a commune?”