When Sophie was eleven she asked, directly, at a kitchen table: “Grandma.

Do you think it was really her?”

And Margaret said: “I think you remembered something true, and I think you were brave enough to say it out loud in a room full of adults.

Whether your mother helped you do that is a question I don’t have any way to answer, and I’ve decided I don’t need to.”

Sophie thought about that for a while.

“That’s a cop-out,” she said.