“You were a widow and obliged to support yourself?”
“No, that’s hardly accurate. I was not supporting myself entirely and I was not a widow.” The pale roses deepened a little under the black toque, but the voice was a trifle clearer than before.
“You mean that at the time you came to Rosemont your husband was still living?” The prosecutor made no attempt to disguise the astonishment in his voice.
“I do not know whether he was living or not. He had left me, you see, almost seventeen years before I came to Rosemont. I learned three years ago that he was dead, but not when he died.”
“Mrs. Ives, I do not wish to dwell on a subject that must be painful to you, but I would like to get this straight. Were you divorced?”
“It is not at all painful to me,” said Patrick Ives’s mother gently, her small gloved hands wrung tightly together on the edge of the witness box. “It happened many years ago, and my life since has been full of so many things. We were not divorced. My husband was younger than I, and our marriage was not happy. He left me for a much younger woman.”
“It was believed in Rosemont that you were a widow, was it not?”
“Everyone in Rosemont believed me to be a widow except Pat, who had known the truth since he was quite a little boy. It was foolish of me not to tell the truth, perhaps, but I had a great distaste for pity.” She smiled again, graciously, at the prosecutor. “False pride was about the only luxury that I indulged in, in those days.”
“You say that you were supporting both your son and yourself?”
“No. Pat was doing any little jobs that he could get, as he had done since he sold papers on the corner when he was six years old.” For a moment the smile faded and she eyed the prosecutor steadfastly, almost sternly, as though daring him to challenge that statement, and for a moment it looked as though he were about to do exactly that, when abruptly he veered.