The Edge of Doom by Amanda Cross

they were alone. She seemed to think we spent our time together telling male jokes and slandering women. I was hard put to convince her that the men I knew usually had something particular to discuss and simply got on with it.”
    “No doubt there are other kinds of male conversations.”
    “Of course. But my wife seemed to think there was only one kind, portrayed on television by men in bars. I need hardly add that she was nothing like Kate.”
    “Or Kate’s mother?”
    “The resemblance was closer there, but not very close. My wife didn’t have a profession nor want one.”
    Reed nodded and went on with his reading. “When did you leave Kate’s mother?” he asked, putting the paper temporarily aside.
    “Not long after Kate was born; a few months later. I urged her to come away with me, bringing our baby, but she refused. Fansler had indicated no doubts about Kate’s paternity. She wanted to stay with him.”
    “So you went west,” Reed said, glancing at the résumé, now at the side of his plate.
    “Yes. I was avoiding the temptation to return to her, to visit. Three thousand miles seemed a sensible distance at the time; anyway, it was the farthest away I could get.”
    “Did you help to decide on the baby’s, on Kate’s name?”
    “Oh, yes. It was Shakespeare’s favorite woman’s name. Rosalind was, and is, my favorite woman character in Shakespeare, but Louise would not agree on Rosalind, so Kate it was. Louise wanted Katherine, but I stood my ground.”
    “Fansler had nothing to say on the matter?”
    “No. He had named the sons; he considered the daughter’s name her mother’s choice.”
    “An old-fashioned, conventional family.”
    “Surely,” Jay smiled, “ ‘There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave to tell us this.’ To tell you, that is.”
    “Kate shares your passion for Shakespeare.”
    “But it’s not what she teaches.”
    “Not since her first teaching days.” Reed refused to let the conversation revert to Kate. “Did you know you would work as an architect when you went west? That seems to have come later.”
    “I was studying architecture when I met Louise. I returned to it some years later.”
    “So I see; you studied architecture at Yale.”
    “Yes. But I eventually met up with a chap from Columbia, and we started our firm.”
    “But not in New York.”
    “No. I never returned to New York to work, except for the occasional project. By the time the west woke up to the fact that they ought to preserve a few of their older buildings—and by this time the bulldozers had knocked most of them down—there was a good bit of work for us out there.”
    “You came back to New Haven, but you never visited the Fanslers or Louise or Kate.”
    “No. I had promised not to; I kept my promise until a few weeks ago. Everyone who might have given a damn was dead.”
    “What about your adopted sons?”
    “We don’t meet often. I may tell them one of these days. I suspect they’ll be glad to hear I was such a randy fellow in my youth.”
    “I never knew Kate’s parents,” Reed said. “They were dead before I met her; they both died on the young side.”
    Reed had, more than once, heard from Kate how conventional her mother was, insisting that Kate go to dancing school and behave in a manner appropriate to the mother’s ideas of ladylike behavior. Reed had often wondered what would have happened if Louise had lived past sixty, long enough to face the fact that Kate was determined to be a professional, a feminist and a far from ladylike woman. Louise had become ill some years before her death, and had not challenged Kate, nor disputed with her. Reed wondered now if perhaps it was not her illness, but her memories of Kate’s father that explained her tolerance of Kate’s decisions.
    He did not mention this. “What sort of temporary work did you undertake when you weren’t being an architect?” he asked.
    “Subcontracting, usually, or just working as a builder. I