“You are well, Victoria? You are happy?”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “Both well and happy.”
“But you have not remarried?”
The last time I’d been here was with my brief husband for a strained bridal visit. “It is possible to be happy and not married, as Albert doubtless can tell you, or as you know yourself.” The last was a cruel remark: Uncle Carl had killed himself shortly after Albert was born. I felt vindictively pleased, then guilty. Surely I was mature enough not to need that kind of satisfaction. Somehow Rosa always made me feel eight years old.
Rosa shrugged her thin shoulders disdainfully. “No doubt you are right. Yet for me-I am to die without the joy of grandchildren.”
Albert shifted uncomfortably on the settee. It was clearly not a new complaint.
“A pity,” I said. “I know grandchildren would be the crowning joy of a happy and virtuous life.”
Albert choked but recovered. Rosa narrowed her eyes angrily. “You, of all people, should know why my life has not been happy.”
Despite my efforts at control, anger spilled over. “ Rosa, for some reason you think Gabriella destroyed your happiness. What mysterious grievance a girl of eighteen could have caused you I don’t know. But you threw her out into the city on her own. She didn’t speak English. She might have been killed. Whatever she did to you, it couldn’t have been as bad as what you did to her.
“You know the only reason I’m here: Gabriella made me promise that I would help you if you needed it. It stuck in my gut and it still does. But I promised her, and here I am. So let’s leave the past in peace: I won’t be sarcastic if you’ll stop throwing around insults about my mother. Why not just tell me what the problem is.”
Rosa tightened her lips until they almost disappeared. “The most difficult thing I ever did in my life was to call you. And now I see I should not have done it.” She rose in one movement like a steel crane, and left the room. I could hear the angry clip of her shoes on the uncarpeted hail and up the bare stairs. In the distance a door slammed.