This is what I tell myself: [my mother] did everything she ever wanted to do. She never really denied herself anything for me. See, I say, she had a wonderful life; she did what she wanted to do. And I have no right to change her fulfillment into my misery. I’m on my own broom now.

I lost count of the incidences of ‘We can imagine’ or ‘It is safe to imagine’ or ‘We can speculate’ or ‘We can picture her’ or — most revealingly — ‘I like to imagine’: ‘Among all the letters that were destroyed, there was one, I like to imagine, that expressed Lucia’s gratitude to her father for persisting in his belief in her.’ And then again, perhaps there wasn’t.