He sat down with her. “Tell me. I need to know,” he said when she hesitated. “And if that’s not enough, going back over it, with me, might be one of the steps toward the key.”

“I’m not ashamed.” She spoke quietly. “It’s not that I’m ashamed, but that some of it—the things that happened, the things I felt—have always been just for me. But you deserve to hear it.”

He touched the back of her hand, then let her go. “How did you meet him?”

“I guess you could say it was through our mothers. Mrs. Marshall, she had my mama do her hair. Sometimes she’d have Mama come out to her house before a party, or before she was going somewhere special, to do her up. Maybe I’d go along, give Mrs. Marshall a manicure, or do the shampoo. She was nice to me. She was always very kind, and not snooty. Well, not very,” she corrected.

“She would talk to me, and she’d answer questions if I asked about the pictures on the walls or the flowers on the dresser. She’d ask me about school, or boys. And she’d always slip me an extra five dollars when my mother wasn’t looking.

“James was off at school. I’d see him once in a while, but he never noticed me. And I’d look at his pictures on Mrs. Marshall’s bureau. He was so handsome, like a knight or a prince, so maybe I fell a little bit in love that way. Girls do.”

“So do boys,” Brad added.

“Maybe. They gave a lot of parties in the big house. Mrs. Marshall, she loved giving parties. She hired me to help with the serving for some of them, and even bought me a good black skirt and a white blouse so I’d look nice. They had a party in the spring, and James was home from school. He noticed me.”

She looked down at her wine as if she’d forgotten it was there. Gathering her thoughts, she took a slow sip. “He followed me back to the kitchen, and he was talking to me, flirting. I was so shy, and he made me clumsy. But he was so sweet about it. After it was over, and things were cleaned up, he drove me home.”

She lifted her shoulders, let them fall. “I wasn’t supposed to take rides from boys, so I shouldn’t have let him drive me. I knew his mama wouldn’t like it if she found out. And mine? She’d’ve skinned me. But I couldn’t help it. Just like I couldn’t help seeing him again. Sneaking out to see him, because his parents and my mama, they wouldn’t have allowed it. That only made it more exciting, more wonderful. Like Romeo and Juliet. I was young enough, and so was he, to think like that. To slide right into love without thinking about anything else.”

She looked at Brad, and could read his thoughts. “You’re thinking he took advantage of me, that he was using me, but it wasn’t like that. Maybe he didn’t love me, not the way I loved him. But he thought he did. He was only nineteen, and caught up in the romance of it the same as I was.”

“Zoe, at nineteen, with his background, his lifestyle, he knew a lot more about . . . life than you did.”

“Maybe. Maybe that’s true, especially since I didn’t know much of anything. But he didn’t push me, Bradley. I don’t want you to think that. He didn’t insist or demand, and he wasn’t any more to blame than I was. It just happened.”

“And when you told him you were pregnant?”

She took a breath, long and slow. “I didn’t even know I was for over two months. I wasn’t very smart about that kind of thing. It was September before I was sure, and he was away at college. When he came home one weekend, I told him. He was angry, and he was scared. And I guess, looking at it from here, I can see it was already fading for him. Here he is, off at college with all those exciting things happening, and some girl at home he’s already losing interest in comes up pregnant.”

“Yeah, his bad luck.”

She had to smile a little. “You’re awfully hard on him.”

“A hell of a lot harder if I had the chance.” Annoyed, he got up to pour another half glass of wine. “Maybe part of it’s jealousy. But the bigger part is knowing he let you go through this alone.”

“He said we’d do the right thing, that he’d stand by me. I believe he meant it, even though he was scared and angry. I believe he meant it when he said it.”

“Words are cheap.”

“Yes, they are.” She nodded slowly while Brad wandered around the room. “Someone like you, you’d have meant them, and you’d have followed through with them. Not everyone’s built the same. And sometimes the right thing isn’t what you think it is. I’m where I am because he didn’t follow through, so it was the right thing. For me and for Simon.”

“All right. What happened next?”

“He was going to tell his parents, and I had to tell my mama, then we’d do what we had to.”

“But he didn’t do it.”

“Oh, he told his parents, just like I told my mother. Mama was mad, but a part of her was smug. I could see that part on her face when I told her. The part that was thinking it served me right for acting like I was better than the rest of them, and now I’d find out just what was what. Still, when Mrs. Marshall came around, Mama stood up for me.”

Her chin came up now, a gesture of pride. “Mrs. Marshall said I was a liar and a cheat, a tramp who’d tricked her son into sneaking around behind her back. I wasn’t going to drag her boy down in the gutter, and if I was pregnant it didn’t mean the baby was his. Even if it was, she wasn’t having him pay the rest of his life for falling in with me. She said more, things about how she’d taken me into her home, trusted me, and I was no better than a thief and a whore. She tossed a check for five thousand dollars down on the table and told me that was all I’d ever get. I could use it for an abortion, or whatever, but I’d never get another penny, and if I tried to get more, tried to see James again, she’d see to it that my family paid for it.”

“You were carrying her grandchild.”

“She didn’t see it that way. She couldn’t. And she would have made my family pay. She had the money and the power, and I had nothing to fight back with. She sent James away, I don’t know where. I wrote him a letter that September, to the college, asking him what to do, what did he want me to do. He never answered, so I guess that was answer enough. I took the money, and the savings I’d squirreled away, and I left. I wasn’t going to raise my baby in that trailer court. I wasn’t going to raise him anywhere near the Marshalls. After Simon was born, I sent James another letter, with a picture of the baby. It came back unopened. So I put that aside, and I promised myself I’d look after my own. And I wasn’t going to look for somebody to make things better, or different, or show me what to do. I wasn’t going to look for somebody to tell me they loved me and they’d do the right thing.”