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That ain, a little wryly
"I don’t know," she said "I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know"
"What d’ye s about somebody before you meet them, of course the real person isn’t just like what you heard, or what you iined, either; that stays in your es hat you find out when you"Even if you know sos about them later--that kind of affects how you see them, doesn’t it?"
"Aye? Mmm, I suppose so Do ye meanyour other dad? Frank?"
"I suppose I do" She shifted under his hands, shrugging it away She didn’t want to talk about Frank Randall, not just now
"What about your parents, Roger? Do you figure that’s why the Reverend saved all their old stuff in those boxes? So later you could look through it, learn more about them, and sort of add that to your real memories of them?"
"I--yes, I suppose so," he said uncertainly "Not that I have any memories of my real dad in any case; he only saw me the once, and I was less than a year old then"
"But you do remember your htly anxious; she wanted hiht struck him with a small shock The truth of it was, he realized, that he never consciously tried to reave hi of shame
"She died in the War, didn’t she?" Bree’s hand had taken up his suspended htened h
"Yes She--in the Blitz A boht--"
"No In London"
He didn’t want to speak of it He never had spoken of it On the rare occasions when memory led in that direction, he veered away That territory lay behind a closed door, with a large "No Entry" sign that he had never sought to pass And yet tonighthe felt the echo of Bree’s brief anguish at the thought that her son ht not recall her And he felt the sa, from the woman locked behind that door in hisbehind his breastbone that ht have been dread, he reached out and put his hand on the knob of that closed door How lish," he said slowly "AWe went south to live with her in London, when ht of Gran, any , he could srandmother had used on her hands, the faintly musty smell of her upstairs flat in Tottenhae for it, remnants of a previous life that had held a house, a husband, and children
He took a deep breath Bree felt it, and pressed her broad firainst his chest He kissed the back of her neck So the door did open--just a crack, h it, lighting up a stack of battered wooden blocks on a threadbare carpet A wo a toith the rainbows froers curled in reflex, seeing that slim hand
"Mum--my mother--she was s, toher stand on her tiptoes to reach things down froar bowl The battered kettle, three e of biscuits--bright red, with a picture of a parrotMy God, he hadn’t seen those kind ever again--did they still make the mind firmly back from such distractions
"I knohat she looked like, but mostly from pictures, not from my own memories" And yet he did havesensation in the pit of his stoht "Mum," and suddenly he didn’t see the photos any of tiny ainst the soft curve of a breast, and a pleasant warainst his cheek; the cotton fabric of a flowered housedress Blue flowers Shaped like tru vines; he could see them clearly
"What did she look like? Do you look like her at all?"
He shrugged, and Bree shifted, rolling over to face him, her head propped upon her outstretched arm Her eyes shone in the half-dark, sleepiness overcome by interest
"A little," he said slowly "Her hair was dark, likein the wind, sprinkled hite grains of sand He’d sprinkled sand on her head, and she brushed it fro A beach somewhere?
"The Reverend kept soat--but both of us look as though we’re trying hard to keep fro We look a lot alike in that one I have her mouth, I think--andtihtness in his chest whenever he saw the pictures of his mother But then it had passed, the pictures lost theirand became no more than objects in the casual clutter of the Reverend’s house Now he saw thehtness in his chest was back He cleared his throat hard, hoping to ease it
"Need water?" Sheand cup she kept for him on the stool by the bed, but he shook his head, a hand on her shoulder to stop her