The Custodian of Paradise by Wayne Johnston

then silence.
    “A boy and a girl,” Dr. Breen said in reply to my question.
    “Which was born first?”
    “The girl.”
    “Will you ever tell the children I am their mother?” I asked my mother.
    “No.”
    “Not even when they are grown and old enough to be trusted with a secret?”
    “I cannot see what good it would do anyone, including you.”
    “So you will let them take this misapprehension to their graves.”
    “You make it all sound so sinister.”
    “I’m left-handed.”
    “We cannot, of course, control what you will do. Especially after we are gone. But it would be selfish, don’t you think, to disrupt their lives, throw them into confusion, just to satisfy some ill-conceived notion of yours?”
    “An ill-conceived notion for ill-conceived children.”
    “Believe me, it is often the kindest thing to withhold the truth. Why would you be here if you did not think so yourself?”
    “We are all liars.”
    “In service of a greater good. I can think of thousands of examples.”
    “Yes. So can I. Will you send me photographs?”
    “It might be best for you if we did not.”
    “Perhaps I know best what’s best for me.”
    “You are far too young for such self-knowledge. It would be best, Sheilagh, best for everyone, if you did not communicate with us onceyou leave this house. You have your own life to look forward to. And you will be better able to live it if you leave us to ours. It will take courage. No one knows that better than I do. I was not much older than you are now when I left you.”
    “You see your abandonment of me when I was six as an act of courage?”
    “Yes, I do. Though I do not mean to hurt you by saying so. And that is all that I will say about it.”
    “If that was courage, I can only pray that I remain a coward all my life.”
    “Perhaps you will.”
    “The babies really will look nothing like you,” I told Dr. Breen. “Have you thought of that? They will not have the Breen family look, whatever that might be. I’ll bet you were hoping for a son, at least one son. A son and heir, in whom there will run not one drop of Breen blood. And what if both of them had been girls? Would you have kept bringing pregnant girls in here until you got a boy?”
    “How could a girl like you be your mother’s daughter?” he said, shaking his head.
    “Why did you marry her?”
    “What?”
    “Why did
you
marry
her
? Why would a man like you, from a family like yours, marry her? A woman who was known to be divorced. And to have had a child by her first marriage. And to have been born a Catholic.”
    “You’ve heard of love, perhaps?”
    “Yes. I’ve heard of it. Have you heard that money is the best cure for a tarnished reputation?”
    He turned, his face so engorged with blood I doubted he would make it to the door. But he did and locked it loudly behind him, giving the key such an emphatic, savage twist that it shook the room.
    I had put aside my wit for common insults that, though probably true, had been the measure of my defeat. The girl behind the wit hadbeen spooked from her hiding place like a rabbit by a pack of hounds. He, they, had won. They knew it. Had known it before the babies came. All that remained was for me to leave the house. I would make no more “remarks.” They would be magnanimous, polite, attentive, solicitous, even kind in victory, and their magnanimity would be unbearable.
    They had known that when it came to relinquishing my child, my wit would let me down, my bravado would vanish. They had foreseen what I had not. I had thought I could hold up until I left the house, perhaps maintain my composure even in some place of perfect privacy, maintain it forever.
Two heartbeats
.
    I would stay in the house, in the suite, Dr. Breen said, until he decided I was well enough to travel.
    I lived in dread of hearing the babies crying, but even late at night I did not hear them. I wondered if they had been taken from the house, not to be returned until after my