HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND
She said it to him, the explanation of the door, but her eyes completed their move to me without rushing it.
“This is Bella,” he said. “Lydia’s daughter.”
The introduction. Lydia’s daughter — not Bella, not just the name, the placement of me. Lydia’s daughter, which was: the context, the frame, the structural information that organized the scene for someone arriving into it without the prior chapters. He said it with the evenness of a man for whom the introduction was simply true, simply the correct information, not a sentence being managed.
She looked at me.
“Catherine Marsh,” she said. She extended her hand, which I shook — the firm, direct handshake of a woman who had decided what kind of
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