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said.
“ You stink. You’re a bandit. I hate you.” He began to
cry again, blubbering little sobs from being tired and hungry.
    I turned on Jana in fury. “Thank you very
much for your help,” I said with crude sarcasm. “I was hoping to
make Val cry some more, but I don’t have your talent.” Jana’s face
fell and her mouth opened, but I was too angry to stop myself.
“He’s not having the wonderful adventure you are, and he isn’t
Captain Reynaldo’s little darling like you.”
    Jana’s shoulders slumped and she hung her
head. I heard a strange sniffling, hiccupping noise. How long had
it been since this tough little girl had allowed herself to cry in
my hearing? She had held up like a trouper, only to be defeated by
her own mother.
    “I am so sorry,” I said, appalled at my
cruelty. I grabbed Jana’s hands as she fought me, then wrapped my
arms around her and kissed her teary face. “I have the best girl in
the whole world. We’re all tired and hungry, and it makes us say
stupid things, even me. Can you forgive your wicked mother?” My
voice trailed off. I was not good in a situation like this, unsure
how much of the truth I dared express to young children or whether
it would be better to mouth sunny platitudes of hope to keep our
spirits up. My children knew me well enough to be suspicious of any
unnatural optimism on my part, but there was no point in burdening
them with too much reality.
    Jana was not appeased. “You said I was only a
girl. You told him Papa wouldn’t pay for me.” She broke away from
me, backing against the wall and screaming her next words. “But
Papa loves me best. Papa will come for me and take me home, and
leave you here with that– that stinking baby you love so much!” She
broke into loud, uncontrolled sobs.
    My head whirled with fatigue as I was thrust
back into the intense emotions following Val’s birth. Jana had
loathed the little being from the moment of his arrival, the scrap
of humanity that had taken her place at my breast and in my bed.
She had denied or forgotten that, at three-and-a-half, she had not
nursed or slept a full night with me for close to two years, and
reacted as if Val had thrown her out bodily from her rightful
position in the family.
    At first she had reverted to infancy,
speaking baby talk, pretending to dislike solid food or to be
unable to walk. When that had failed, provoking Dominic’s admiring
laughter but no action, and only my weary disregard, she had fallen
back on violence. I had caught her once, Isobel many times, bending
Val’s limbs at unnatural angles or gouging at an eye with
determined fingers. It had been established as a firm rule that
Jana was never to be left alone with the baby under any
circumstances.
    Niall Galloway, new to our household, and
with the jaded experience of being the eldest of six children, had
given us the benefit of his expert opinion. “Don’t worry,” he said,
“when the next one comes she’ll love it as if it were her own.”
    Dominic raised an eyebrow. “Amalie,” he said,
“I give you fair warning. If there is a ‘next one,’ I will deny
fathering it.” He had not really expected Val, had never demanded
that his wife give him a son, although he had seemed pleased enough
with the gift after the fact. But two children were sufficient in
what had been, not so long ago, a purely masculine household.
    “Dominic,” I said, “if there is a ‘next one’
you may divorce me for reason of insanity.”
    Slowly things had improved. Jana was always
Dominic’s favorite. It was normal for a man to prefer a child, who
could talk and think, who had a personality, to an infant, and
there was already a natural sympathy between this father and
daughter. Dominic took her riding and hunting, short expeditions to
introduce her to his favorite country pastimes. He gave her a tiny
knife and showed her how to hold it, telling her she could use it
only when he was with her. He let her fall asleep in the