"Yes, you do, or you wouldn't think you didn't."
"No. None of us really cares. Except Mamma. And even she doesn't as much as she thinks she does. If we cared we'd be glad to sit in there, doing nothing, thinking about him…. That's why we keep on going upstairs to look at him, to make ourselves feel as if we cared."
She wondered. Was that really why they did it? She thought it was because they couldn't bear to leave him there, four days and four nights, alone. She said so. But Roddy went on in his hard, flat voice, beating out his truth.
"We never did anything to make him happy."
"He was happy," she said. "When Mark went. He had Mamma."
"Yes, but he must have known about us. He must have known about us all the time."
"What did he know about us?"
"That we didn't care.
"Don't you remember," he said, "the things we used to say about him?"
She remembered. She could see Dan in the nursery at Five Elms, scowling and swearing he would kill Papa. She could see Roddy, and Mark with his red tight face, laughing at him. She could see herself, a baby, kicking and screaming when he took her in his arms. For months she hadn't thought about him except to wish he wasn't there so that she could go on playing. When he was in the fit she had been playing on the Kendals' piano, conceited and happy, not caring.