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left to watch the fireworks display.
    Nora did not answer. They were in a city like many other cities, and while her family danced in the crowd, Nora sat alone in the cab of the truck. In recent months the news from Europe had strained her nerves, and the devastation of the atom bomb had been the last straw, plunging her into doubt. There was nothing else on the radio, and the newspapers and movies featured Dantesque images of concentration camps. Step by step, she followed every detail of the atrocities and accumulated suffering, obsessed by trains in Europe that made no stops but carried their cargo straight to the ovens, and by the hundreds of thousands cremated in Japan in the name of a different ideology. I should never have brought children into this world, she murmured in her horror. When a euphoric Charles Reeves brought home the news of the bomb, she had thought it obscene to rejoice over a massacre of such dimensions; her husband seemed to have lost his sanity along with everyone else.
    â€œNothing will ever be the same again, Charles. Humanity has committed something worse than original sin. This is the end of the world,” she lamented, terribly distraught but maintaining the facade of her customary good manners.
    â€œDon’t be silly. We should applaud the progress of science. It’s a good thing the bomb is in our hands, not the enemy’s. No one can stand up to us now.”
    â€œThey will use them again and wipe out life on this earth!”
    â€œThe war is over, and we’ve been spared even worse. Many more would have died if we hadn’t dropped the bombs.”
    â€œBut, Charles, hundreds of thousands did die.”
    â€œThey don’t count; they were all Japs.” He laughed.
    For the first time, Nora had doubts about the quality of her husband’s soul and asked herself whether he was a true Master, as he claimed. It was late at night when her family returned. Gregory was asleep in his father’s arms, and Judy held a balloon painted with stars and stripes.
    â€œThe war is over at last. Now we’ll have butter and meat and gasoline,” Olga announced, radiant, waving a tattered paper flag.
    Although nearly a year passed between the time of his mother’s depression over the inhumanity of war and his father’s death, Gregory remembered the events as one; in his memory, they would forever be related: it was the beginning of the end of the happy days of his childhood. A short time later, when Nora seemed to have recovered and was no longer talking about concentration camps and bombs, Charles Reeves fell ill. From the very first, his symptoms were alarming, but he was proud of his strength and refused to believe that his body could betray him. He felt young; he could still change a truck tire in a couple of minutes or spend hours on a ladder painting a mural without getting a cramp in his shoulder. When his mouth filled with blood he attributed it to a fishbone stuck in his throat; the second time it happened he said nothing to anyone but bought a bottle of Milk of Magnesia and took a spoonful whenever he felt his stomach in flames. Soon he lost his appetite and survived on milk toast, broths, and baby food. He lost weight, and his eyes clouded over; he could not see the road clearly, and Olga had to take over the wheel. She realized when he was too tired to travel any farther, and stopped so they could set up camp. As the hours dragged by, the children entertained themselves running around the campsite, because their mother had packed away their books and was not giving them lessons. Nora had not accepted the fact that Charles Reeves might be mortal; she could not understand why his strength was flagging—his energy was hers as well. For years her husband had controlled every aspect of her life and that of her children; the detailed rules of The Infinite Plan, which he administered as he pleased, left no room for doubts. With him she had no freedom,