Spring of 1985. She wore that gray coat with the fur collar. Do you remember it?”

“I remember.”

“She sat on my sofa and told me I was unsuitable. Wrong background. Wrong  family. Wrong future for her son.”

I carefully placed my mug on the table because my hand had started shaking.

“My mom said that?”

“She said more than that.”

“What did she threaten you with?”

“She threatened to get Dad fired when my  parents were already barely surviving. My sister was about to marry a good man, and Ruth threatened to destroy her reputation.”

“She couldn’t have done that.”

Anna held my gaze.

“Couldn’t she?”

I had no answer.

Everyone in Millfield listened to Ruth.

“My mother,” I whispered. “My mother taught Sunday school.”

“Your mother had power,” Anna said softly. “And she used it on a twenty-year-old girl whose family had nothing.”

“So