"Licensed by the state of New York."

"You saw Hugh. Yes, okay, you can come in. My husband is in the other room. He's busy."

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She led me through a foyer past a carpeted staircase and into what used to be called a den and maybe still was west of Crow Street. A flat-screen TV the size of a Caddie Escalade occupied one wall, and the bookshelves lining another held what appeared to be collectible plates with an early American motif on wooden stands and a couple of shelves of mystery novels that included the complete works of Margaret Truman.

"I'm so glad you saw Hugh. I have to say I'm envious,"

Mrs. Stiver added with a nervous laugh. "I haven't seen Hugh for going on fourteen years." She perched on the edge of a long low couch while I seated myself tentatively on a well-worn recliner I assumed was that of her husband, the child beater. The only printed matter on the coffee table was the Sunday Times Union TV listings. "I suppose Hugh told you that he's estranged from his family—from Anson and myself."

"Yes, he did. That must be very difficult, especially for you." She didn't pick up on this.

"How is he? What is he doing? Is he a mechanic? Hugh was the handy one with machines and engines."

"He's an auto mechanic."

"In Massachusetts?"

"Yes."

"A friend of mine, Cindy Visnicki, saw him there three or four years ago. I wrote to an address a friend of Cindy's got hold of, but Hugh never wrote back. He hates us." She didn't sob or tear up. She just looked at me, waiting, it seemed, to find out how much I knew.

I said, "Hugh's childhood was pretty bad, is my impression.

Apparently he prefers to leave it far behind."

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"I know. I understand. I don't blame him."

"No."

"I suppose I could blame myself."

"Oh?"

"But what's the point?"

"It's hard to know."

"You can do what you can do, but you can only do what you can do."

"Mm."

"Doctor Phil says self-reproach can eat you alive if you let it. Move on and get it right the next time. That's what I've tried to do."

There seemed to be no point asking her if she planned on having three more children and raising them in a home without a sadist in it. "Does your husband also have regrets about the way the boys were treated?"

She sniffed. "I really wouldn't know what Anson thinks about my children. Or about anything else."

"He's the uncommunicative type?"

"Uncommunicative? With the boys, Anson communicated with his fists. With Jennifer and me—Jennifer is my daughter—he didn't have much to say, no. What Anson was, was a good provider. I never had that as a child, and my husband Jim was also a disappointment in that way. He died at age thirty-one when he spent a good part of his paycheck one Friday night on beer and on losing at poker and then driving a company pickup truck into a bridge abutment.

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three days Jim worked. They thought I should also reimburse them for the truck. Can you believe it?"

"You were in a fix."

"Anson was just coming out of a divorce, and we were both feeling incredibly lost and needy, and he had his engineering job at GE. And of course he never told me why his first wife had left him and moved to California along with their two little boys. I only heard about that later on."

"I see."

"Hugh knew you were from Albany, I guess?"

"Yes, I told him I was."

"Did he ask you anything about me?"

"No, I'm sorry to say he didn't. He seems to have moved on, too."

"I see Jenny once in a while. She's strong like Gregory was. Hugh was the cutie, but Jenny would never take any guff from anybody. And Greg—that boy always knew exactly what he wanted. He seemed to end up with Anson's brains and determination even though Anson was not his biological father. I really thought Gregory would go far. When he died, I was so, so torn up. It wasn't just that he was gone, but I really didn't believe he was someone who would take his own life. It made not one shred of sense to me. It just wasn't who Greg was. I kept saying, no, they must have him mixed up with somebody else who would commit suicide. I mean, somebody who survived Anson Stiver would then just give up? It drove me crazy trying to figure it all out. And I never did. I never ever understood why Greg died the way he did."

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"Some of his friends say he had been depressed in the weeks leading up to his death. This was possibly related to his not landing a teaching job. Though someone else has told me he did eventually find a position at a community college near Rochester. Did you know about any of this?"

Her voice wobbled. "No. By that time, Greg wasn't in touch with us a whole lot. Jenny was, but Anson and I weren't in touch with him at all, really. Jenny was on Greg's life insurance policy, as you know. So is Shenango finally going to pay Jenny what they owe her? She has all those student loans, and Anson says we can't help out because we only just get by. The one good thing about Greg not being here now is he doesn't have to see what Obama has done to the economy."

"I'm not involved with Shenango Life, Mrs. Stiver. But my client is very sympathetic to Greg and wants some kind of justice done regarding his death."

"Oh, I assumed you were an insurance investigator. You're not?"

"No. Anyway, once a death has officially been ruled a suicide, insurance companies are generally off the hook.

Otherwise, people planning on killing themselves could just take out big life insurance policies before dying and all but bankrupt the industry."

She rolled her eyes. "The insurance companies won't get any sympathy from me. They're all just greedy. And now they're going to make out like bandits with Obamacare."

I said, "I know you knew that Greg was gay."

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"Oh yes. How could we not know it? The whole world knew it. Greg saw to that. I was accepting, of course. I believe that some people are born that way. My first husband Jim had a brother we all wondered about. Anson was not accepting, though. He thought Greg became gay just to get even with him, but that's just foolishness. For an engineer, Anson has a few strange unscientific opinions."

"Was it your husband who requested that donations in Greg's memory be made to something called the Eddie Fund?

That was listed in the newspaper obituaries."

She turned as pink as the towel on her head. "I did not know at the time what kind of organization that was. Anson knew I would not have approved. He said it was something about orphans. Then Jenny found out what it really was, and she had a fit."

"Were you aware of any of Greg's gay relationships? Who he dated?"

"Just in high school. An effeminate boy named Bootsy was always coming over and spending time in Greg's room with him. But then Anson caught them doing something, and that was the end of that. In college, Greg was off on his own. I thought maybe he had a boyfriend who would show up at the funeral and I would get to meet him. But that didn't happen as far as I know. I was disappointed. I always hoped that unlike myself, Greg would find real love with another adult person."