He stood on the sidewalk, paralyzed by disbelief. Of all the people he had ever known, he would have put this woman last on the list in a search for evil’s harbor. She was kind and generous and good. If his father’s seldom-expressed affection was love, then of the three people who might love Joe, he would have said that Dulcie loved him most of all, if only because she had loved him without a moment of exception for far longer than Portia had loved him, if indeed she did.
