“You changed her school. Her phone number.”

“I moved us to my mother’s house in Vermont because I couldn’t make the rent in Portsmouth after I took her on.” Roberta’s chin came up. “That’s the great cruelty.

That’s the thing you’ve been chewing on for twenty years. I couldn’t afford the apartment with two of us in it.”

I sat in a stranger’s front room with my ears ringing.

“You never let her write to me.”

And Roberta Kean said, “No. That one’s true and I’ve no excuse for it. I thought she’d settle faster if she wasn’t looking backward. Everybody told me that.