Chapter 11

Her loving husband visited three times over those twenty-four hours — once with Joanna, twice with the children. Lizzie, a lively little thing, looked around the hospital room and, as always, turned to her all-knowing mother for an answer:

“Mom, what should I write in my essay about the 1950s?”

“Don’t burden your mother with homework,” Stephen said sternly. But Kate was only too glad to occupy her mind with anything other than the memory of Gordon’s old lips and his damp tongue.

“It’s all right,” she said with a smile, pushing away thoughts of the dream in which the old man had offered her Joanna’s place. What a thing to dream! “The 1950s ... Lizzie, if the ancient legends are to be believed, it was a golden age, when even young people were sober and sensible, children respected and obeyed their elders, wise men ruled the world, order and prosperity reigned everywhere, and people were generally of more use than they are in these troubled, anxious times.”