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inflection at the end of the sentence, Joan knew it wasn’t a question; he was asking for confirmation of what he already knew.
    “I don’t see what else we can do,” she said gently. “I know she’s difficult, and I know — ” She hesitated, but knew there was no need to cushion Matt from the truth. After all, they’d both lived with his grandmother through four of the first five years of his life, after Joan had finally faced the fact that she couldn’t raise him by herself in New York City. “Matt, I’m sorry. I know how she treats you, but what else can I do? She’s still my mother.”
    “Jeez, Mom, it’s not just me — look how she treats
you
. It’s like you can’t ever do anything right, no matter how hard you try!”
    “I know.” Joan sighed. “But it still doesn’t change the fact that she’s my mother, and I have to take care of her as long as I can. I can’t just — ” She cast around in her mind, searching for the right words, but could find none better than the ones her mother always used. “I just can’t bring myself to ‘throw her in the home.’ ”
    Matt took a deep breath, then slowly let it out in a sigh of resignation. “I guess,” he agreed, and Joan could see how much effort it took for him to give her even that. But then he brightened. “Hey, who knows? Maybe she’ll be better once she’s out of here. Let’s go up and get whatever she’s going to need, and get out of here.” He wrinkled his nose against the acrid smell of the fire that hung heavy in the house. “This place smells even worse than ever.” But as they started up the stairs, Matt’s step slowed, and when they came to the landing, he paused, gazing through the open door to the room that had belonged to the aunt he’d never known. “She’s not gonna make us move Aunt Cynthia’s stuff too, is she?”
    Joan hesitated at the door to her sister’s room, then stepped through it. And suddenly she heard her mother’s voice again.
“Get out! That’s Cynthia’s room, and those are Cynthia’s things, and no one is to touch them! No one! And keep your bastard brat out of there, too!”
    As the echo of the words slowly faded away in her mind, Joan shook her head. “No,” she told Matt. “She can’t ask us to do that.” She smiled at her son, and offered him a conspiratorial wink. “After all, we can’t move what we can’t touch, can we?” But even as she spoke the words, her mother’s voice rang in her mind once more. This time she recalled a day when Matt was three, and she had suggested to her mother that he was old enough to have his own room.
    “Cynthia’s room? You want me to give your sister’s room to your little brat? Never! As long as I’m alive, I’ll keep your sister’s room ready. When she comes home to me, all her things will be waiting for her! All of them!”
    Joan, eyes glistening with tears, had said nothing, knowing it was useless to argue with her mother.
    Now, she reached out and pulled the door to Cynthia’s room closed, hoping that by blocking the view of her sister’s room, she could also block the pain of her mother’s words.
    She didn’t mean it,
Joan told herself.
She was already starting to get sick, and she didn’t know what she was saying.
    “Come on, let’s pack up whatever she’s going to need and get out of here,” she said to Matt, unconsciously repeating the same words he’d spoken a few moments before.
    *                                     *                                     *
    IT SEEMED NOTHING could thaw the icy chill that had settled over the Hapgoods’ dining room: not the fire that Matt had laid in the hearth, nor the dozens of candles Joan had lit to cast a warm glow over the family’s dinner. Though she’d cut the last of the fall flowers and set the table with the set of Limoges that had been given to Bill’s grandmother as a wedding present from the