"That Paige is—that Mom was—" Lucy pulled back and looked up at her. Her face was blotchy and wet and her eyes were Winnie's eyes, gray-green, the color of lake water in October. "That we're both hers."
In the doorway, Paige made a sound. It wasn't a word.
Irene kept her eyes on Lucy. "Your mother had two daughters," she said. "She had Paige when she was twenty-two years old, and she had you when she was twenty-six. Both of them with your father."
The farmhouse clock over the stove ticked. Lucy had always thought it was the loudest clock she had ever heard. It was louder now.
"That's not true," Paige said from the doorway. Her voice was very calm. She sounded, Lucy thought, exactly like Dana. "That's literally not possible. Her mom was the—Dad had an affair. With her mom. That's why she exists." Paige pointed at Lucy without looking at her. "Dad cheated on my mom with some woman from Bloomer, and he got her pregnant, and my mom forgave him, and then the woman died and we took the kid in because it was the right thing to do. That's what happened. That's the whole thing. My mom told me."
"Some of that's true," Irene said.
"All of it's true."
"Some of it." Irene's voice was gentle now. She was looking at Paige the way she looked at Lucy on the bad nights, when Lucy called her at eleven p.m. from under the covers because she couldn't stop thinking about the ice on Highway 53. "Your father did have an affair with my daughter. Fourteen and a half years ago. That part is true. And Lucy came from it. That part is true too. But that wasn't the first time they were together, honey. They were together before Dana. They lived in an apartment over the hardware store on Bridge Street in Chippewa, the two of them, for almost three years. And you were born while they lived there."
"Stop," Paige said.
"You had colic. You screamed every night from six to midnight for three months. Winnie used to walk you up and down Bridge Street in the stroller at two in the morning, in that coat, because the cold was the only thing that calmed you down. Old Mr. Hanlon used to come down and make her cocoa—"
"Stop it." Paige's hand had tightened on the door frame until the knuckles were white. "You don't know anything about me. You don't know me. I've seen you, like, ten times in my life, at Lucy's stupid band concerts, you sat in the back and you never even said hi to me—"
"I wasn't allowed to say hi to you."
Irene looked, for a moment, as if she wished she could take that back. Not because it wasn't true. Because of what it did to Paige's face.
"There was a piece of paper," Irene said, more quietly. "There's always a piece of paper. I signed nothing. I want you to know that. I never agreed to any of it. But it didn't matter what I agreed to. I was the grandmother. Grandmothers don't get a vote."
Paige turned around and walked out of the doorway. They heard her feet on the stairs, fast, two at a time, and then a door upstairs slammed so hard the farmhouse clock jumped on its nail.
Lucy stood very still in the circle of her grandmother's arm. She was holding the coat so tightly that her fingers ached.