“Did he?”
“Did he what?”
“Help.”
Clara understood what I meant.
“Sometimes. When my mother would let him.”
Money again.
Of course.
I almost laughed.
Even my father had apparently known only one language.
But Clara shook her head as if she had followed my thought.
“It wasn’t only money.”
I said nothing.
“He asked to see me.”
My eyes lifted.
“She refused for a long time.”
“Why?”
“Because by then he had married your mother.”
I glanced toward Eleanor.
Mother’s face was unreadable.
“She thought he should leave your family alone,” Clara said. “She believed she’d made her choice when she didn’t tell him immediately. She didn’t want to return years later and disrupt everything.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
Clara nodded.
“Twice.”
That hurt more than I expected.
My own father had met her while I was alive.
While I was under the same roof.
