Lucas wanted to know whether she knew how to play chess.

Maya asked whether she could bake cookies without any nuts in them.

And Clara pointed to an old pocket photograph of Alex as a boy, tucked in Beatrice’s wallet, and asked why he looked so sad in it.

Beatrice answered each of them as best she could.

And when she reached a question for which she had no acceptable answer, no excuse, no justification, she did the thing she had never in her life done before.

She simply said, “I was wrong.” No defensiveness.