The house on Babcock Street had been owned by Geoffrey’s father — Alan’s grandfather. Geoffrey had been paying Jeanne alimony and child support since the divorce, and his father had covered certain other expenses — use of his car, Liz’s wages as housekeeper, and the house itself, since Jeanne paid no rent. In 1970, Geoffrey told us that since we had been living together for 2 years we were in a de facto common-law marriage, and that under Massachusetts law at the time that entitled him to stop paying alimony. He also told us he wanted us to leave the house.

Neither of us disputed any of this. We accepted it and started making plans. Jeanne had a small income from a trust. I had finished at MIT by then and was trying to figure out what to do next. We needed a place we could afford together, and we needed to find it quickly.

We started looking for a house. We found a small ranch on 155 Maple Street in Sherborn, an all-electric house with a master bedroom and 2 smaller bedrooms. The monthly payment was about $300 — affordable if we were careful.

Sherborn was a small rural town about 20 miles southwest of Boston. It was quiet and wooded, nothing like Brookline. The schools were good, which mattered for Alan. It felt like a fresh start in a way that none of us could have predicted when Geoffrey made his announcement.

The property had about 2 acres on a small pond, and across the street there was a horse farm. There was a small barn on the property that we could use for storage. The house itself was modest — nothing like the Victorian on Babcock Street — but it had everything we needed.

My mother had come to live with us after the Soviet invasion, and my sister Jana had emigrated and was also with us. Milan, Jana’s boyfriend who had emigrated with her, lived there too. So 5 of us moved to Sherborn together: Jeanne, her son Alan, my mother, Jana, and me. Milan was nearby but not in the house. We made it work.

Alan and I drove together each morning — he to his school in Cambridge, and I was going to MIT, so each day I drove the 2 of us in my old Corsair to Boston and back. It was a long commute but it gave us time to talk. Alan was 9 or 10 by then and we had always gotten along well.