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believe that all things happen for a reason. For what possible reason did your mother have to die? What was the purpose behind the death of that beautiful baby? For so very long I teetered between life and death myself.”
    â€œYou say that, Papa, but I can never believe it. You wouldn’t have left me. I know you wouldn’t.”
    â€œOf course you’re right. When I was lucid, when my thinking was unclouded, I knew that I did have something else to live for. Some one. ”
    Molly’s father, his eyes now filling with tears from memory and regret, looked deeply into his daughter’s equally dewy eyes—eyes the very same shade of blue as her mother’s.
    â€œPapa, let’s not talk about this—ever again.”
    Osborne nodded.
    â€œPromise me now. Promise.”
    Osborne nodded again. His expression brightened bravely. “And have we not already moved miles and miles down the road in the journey of our lives? Though Mrs. Barton would never be a perfect replacement for your mother, she’s a fine woman, given to only occasional bouts with hypochondria and dyspepsia. And she’ll make a boon companion for you and a good wife for me. And—and she makes me laugh, and isn’t that the best tonic there is for the affliction of widowerhood?”
    Molly nodded. She touched her lips to her father’s forehead. Then she turned her head to glance out the window. “It appears,” she noted in an analytical tone, “that Mag has no interest in coming up the stairs to fetch me. Today she simply isn’t going to exert herself. She is looking up, though.” Molly raised the window sash. She waved. “Hello there, Mag! Top of the mornin’ to ye!” An aside to her father: “Sometimes I pretend to be an Irish charwoman. She absolutely hates it!” Molly exaggerated her smile for Maggie, so as to rain morning cheer down upon her impatient friend. “I’ll be right down!”
    â€œTake all the time you need!” Maggie shouted back up to her. Maggie’s smile was manufactured as well, but it was frigid, almost scornful. And then in an exasperated under-breath, she said to herself, “Oh Molly Osborne! How you absolutely jar me!”
    Molly closed the window. “Good-bye, Papa. I’ll be on pins and needles until this evening.”
    â€œHopefully there’ll be no prick at all,” said Osborne. He watched his daughter hurry from the rear rooms of the flat and then listened as the dental parlor’s front door, which opened upon the building’s third-story landing, was unlatched and then slammed shut. He promptly crossed to the window of the room where he slept and shaved himself and read his paper in the evening. (There were two other rooms, which comprised the Osbornes’ “living quarters”: a kitchen, large enough for a small dining table, and Molly’s cupboard-sized bedroom.) He looked down upon Maggie. She was shifting her weight, with obvious impatience, from leg to leg. She glanced up of a sudden and caught his gaze, then quickly turned away, the gesture constituting an undeniable cut.
    â€œYou will not win this day, you minx,” said Osborne in apostrophe. “I am to be your stepfather, whether you like it or not. I’ve heard stories of how you’ve browbeaten your mother into abject subservience, but those days, little Maggie, are over. I won’t command arbitrary allegiance from you. But I will command respect. I am a good dentist—even if I did learn my craft through itinerant apprenticeship. I am a good father—even if I’ve had to, of late, carry the burden of being mother as well. And I do not resemble your late father in any respect except that we were roughly the same age when he died. He was a drunkard all his life. I’ve been a drunkard for two years only, and only by circumstance—circumstances that are finally being put behind me. I will