I am not asking you to come back to me.

I have no right to ask you for anything at all.

I only wanted it said, in front of every person who judged you, that the shame was never once yours.

It was ours.”

Lucy did not weep.

She stood very still and let it be said, and received it, and gave nothing away.

It was my father who wept, in his wheelchair, silently, the way he did everything now.

Several of the relatives crossed the room to her afterward, murmuring their tearful apologies, and she listened to each of them with a grave, quiet courtesy, and she accepted some and let others pass by unanswered.