---

---

One evening, Gerald told me what had happened between him and my mother.

Twenty-something years ago, he had wanted to bring her into his world properly. She'd seen the way some of his family's circle looked at her — the particular kind of dismissiveness that old money uses for people it considers outside the category — and she'd been humiliated. She didn't wait for his reassurances. She threw a glass of water at him and walked out.

He hadn't been careless. He'd intended to argue the case with his family, find a way through, do it properly. But she didn't want to wait.

His mother had found her shortly afterwards. She'd gone to Diana's address in Bristol — alone, uninvited — and placed an envelope on the table between them.

"The position of Mrs. Harrington is not available to someone with your background. Take this and make a sensible decision."

Diana had poured what was in her glass over the older woman's head and shouted at her to leave. Gerald's mother had a heart condition. In the argument that followed, Diana shoved her during a particularly heated moment. Gerald's mother fell.

She hadn't called an ambulance. She'd taken the envelope and left.

Gerald's mother survived the initial fall but had deteriorating health for the following weeks, and died a month later. Her last instruction was that Gerald was never to marry Diana, and that if he defied her, she would not be interred in the family plot.

My mother had known all of this. She'd run from it, discovered she was pregnant, and raised me as a reminder of everything she hated — in particular, the eyes.

I sat with it for a while.

I didn't know what to feel. Too many people, too many bad choices, too much time. Assigning blame seemed beside the point. My mother had made her choices. So had Gerald's mother. So had Gerald. I was the accumulated result of all of them.