“And, your father was a more gifted man intellectually. Donald found that a bit of a challenge. It made him want to win something over on him. But he kept himself in check for my sake.”
“Because my dad was your brother,” Garner suggested.
“Yes. And my younger brother, too. I was a bit protective of him, as Donald was of your mother.”
Garner had always been fascinated by his family history, in which two siblings married two other siblings. His mother’s older brother marrying his father’s older sister and then, almost exactly ten years later, his parents marrying each other. He remembered one piece of family lore.
“Wasn’t Uncle Don against my parents marrying?”
“Oh, yes, I suppose he was.”
“Why, though? Wasn’t it because of him and you that my parents met?”
Aunt Jennie laughed. “Too t
