“Marguerite,” I said, and I kept my voice smooth and level and clear enough for every single person at that table to hear it.

“I have never once rejected an invitation from you.

I have never kept your grandchildren away from you.

Not for a single day.”

The room had gone very still.

“For eleven years,” I went on, “I spent every summer of my life comforting two heartbroken children — holding them while they cried, because their father told them, and told me, that you hated us.

That we were common.