Did my mom say that?
“He said more than that.
What threatened you with?
“With my dad being fired, when my parents barely managed to survive. To ruin my sister's reputation, I was about to marry a good man. He promised to shatter her.
She couldn’t do that.
Anna held my gaze.
“I couldn’t?”
I had no answer. All of Millfield was listening to Ruth.
My mother,” I muttered. My mother taught catechism on Sundays.
“Your mother had power,” Anna said gently, “and used it against a twenty-year-old girl whose family had nothing.
“Then the letter you sent me, the one where you said you couldn’t with the distance.
I wrote it that same night. I cried from beginning to end.
I lowered my eyes to the cafe.
And then what happened? You got married?
Anna denied with her head.
"No.
“Children?”
"No. There was never anyone else I could imagine that life with.
