The cocktail party had been underway several hours. It was a Sunday afternoon in August. Guests moved between air-conditioned living room and heavy shade under maples on a terrace overlooking Ontarios Grand River. The sky appeared calm and clear, but horizons around Cambridge were smudged with haze. Thunder had held itself away all day, and no one could say when the wind might rise.
Penny Morgans parties were famous among the citys young artists. She presided with detached grace, complemented by the more extravagant demeanour of her friends, director Jed Knight and sculptor Maddie Harrington. Penny took pride in inviting the most promising talents and seeing them prosper from connections made at her palatial home.
A theatre student of Jeds provided entertainment to the sedate crowd that humid day. A boy named Brock with elfish features and curly red fur on head and chest, took to the pool like a golden retriever to a pond. His vivacity attracted the attention of young men and women alike. Penny had made his acquaintance, but carefully showed preference to none of the new visitors.
Some familiar observers wondered at this, as they had before. With Callum Morgan absent, Penny might have flirted with anyone she chose. In such a crowd no one would have looked askance at a surreptitious romance. Her husband remained a mystery to practically all her friends. Some thought it sad, seeing little evidence of love around this intelligent and uncommonly beautiful woman. But privately, Penny had never conceived anything greater for herself than this: at the age of 34 to have so much comfort, and to be considered a benefactress.
Hardly anyone knew what she had been. Jed and Maddie had heard mention of the country childhood, but such references ended abruptly. Maddie, who taught Penny at university, remembered the demure young girl only for her stately beauty. Rather than lying about her past, Penny preferred to cultivate an aura of aloofness.
The only one who knew was Marcia Oliveira, a woman with strange, pale stigmata on the light brown skin of her neck, who kept herself silent and apart. Marcia was homely and irascible as Penny was lovely and sweet. She was the daughter of Ferdi Oliveira, foreman on Pennys fathers farm. The two girls had grown up together and come to Cambridge after high school.
Look at all the children you have, Marcia said after her second martini, during a rare moment when she found herself alone beside Penny. Look what youve done with your life.
Penny knew that tone of derision and self-pity too well to attempt a challenge. Why dont you have a child of your own? she replied, concealing her own resentment.
I could, Marcia said. I have been considering it. A man would only make me feel unwanted, teach me to hang off him like a piece of laundry.
They had exchanged these words before. They cut deeply. Penny had suffered from neglect during the early years of her experience as a trophy wife, until she learned to employ her husbands generosity for her own purposes. Marcia had taught that lesson, too.
A child I could make my own. With no one to compete for attention I could raise it the way I wanted. Ive made enough money of my own. Thats something you havent got! Good benefits, too. I could afford to take the time off. This is what Ive been working for.
She didnt need to repeat how she had spent 15 years building her own security, while her friend lived a parasitic existence.
Why dont you leave him? Marcia had frequently demanded. You can have your share of everything thats his, and your independence.
But Penny was too selfless. Another part of her life she kept secret was the pleasure she felt in Callum Morgans company when they were alone together. It was enough for her.
This reticence frustrated Marcia, but on that August afternoon she was distracted and didnt push the argument. She had started a new strategy of her own, one that Penny could not share. Her brown eyes moved through the crowd of creative spirits. Normally the celebrants would have been more ebullient. But this dull, hot day was one designed for dalliances in curtained bedrooms.
Her sudden silence attracted a glance from Penny, who noticed the white scar on Marcias neck. It bore witness to a similar day in August more than 20 years ago when two girls ran chasing through a field on their fathers farm. They got into a quarrel and tangled with a barb wire fence. One received only a scratch; the other girl tore the skin on her neck and side. Penny still told herself it had been an accident.
You have your choice of candidates for a sperm donor, Penny remarked. Is this another one of your cynical jests, Marcia?
Marcias eyes rested on the red-headed Brock.
Not him! You know, hes gay.
It doesnt matter, said Marcia. Hes young enough and drunk enough. I cant keep a straight man at home, but I know how to bed any man. Hes beautiful, Penny. And beauty is the only thing Ill ever ask him to give my child.
Youre serious, arent you? Well you better think before you strike. Hes only a theatre student. Hes 19.
Intelligence is good! You never invite dopes or losers to these parties.
Marcia, hes deaf! Maybe its congenital.
But Marcia might as well have been deaf for all Pennys protests would do.
No one would ever know it. Look how theyre all attracted to him.
An hour later the storm came up. And that was how Tana Oliveira was conceived, a flash of August lightning in her mothers eyes. Some would call her a work of art, the only graceful thing Marcia had ever made. But dark-haired and olive-skinned, she didnt take after her father, and from the age of five began to wonder who he was.
The only one who remembered for certain was Penny Morgan.